Author Event! Lisa Cheek x Anastasia Zadeik

Zibby's Bookshop is excited to welcome Lisa Cheek to celebrate the launch of her memoir SIT, CINDERELLA, SIT! Lisa will be joined in conversation by Anastasia Zadeik.

About the book:

A debut memoir and (sort of) Cinderella story about a woman who’d been told she was “too old” to create magic who flew to rural China, edited a film without speaking a word of Mandarin, and discovered her own power.

Lisa Cheek loved editing TV commercials—almost as much as she loved her dog, Ron Howard. Then, she “aged out” of advertising, at 45. After being let go, Lisa got a call—at 2:45 AM—from a director who, like everyone in Hollywood, had a film he wanted to make: the original Cinderella story. Now, his dream could come true—if Lisa granted his wish.

In Sit, Cinderella, Sit, Lisa Cheek shares her adventures in editing a film made on location in China—along the Tibetan border—where Mandarin was the only language spoken by everyone but her. Stuck in a house with fourteen men she couldn’t understand, literally, she yearned for conversation and coffee.

But there were moments of wonder and laughter. Lisa forged a bond with her translator and a woman named Sunny. She rescued one dog, and then another. “Everyone speaks Cinderella,” the director had assured her. Maybe he was right.

Told with humor and heart through a fairy tale lens, with flashbacks into the author’s not-always-happy childhood, Sit, Cinderella, Sit is a story about what can happen when you take a leap of faith, look and hear beyond people’s differences, and dare to believe in yourself.

About the speakers:

After twenty-five years editing and producing other people’s work, Lisa Cheek decided to take her friends’ and coworkers’ advice and tell her own stories. “Sit, Cinderella, Sit” hit Amazons #1 Bestseller for Midlife Self Help and Solo Travel Guides while making Zibby Owen’s Most Anticipated Books for 2025. It was also a People Magazine pick. She has written for both radio and television and been published in The Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective. You can find her musings “One Minute Thoughts From A Pink Head” on Substack. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Chris Johnson, two mutts, Josie and Elvis Bruce Wayne, and two kitties, Eartha Kitt and Trixie. She is currently working on her next two books and has several film and television scripts in various stages of development.

Anastasia Zadeik is a writer, editor, and narrative nonfiction performer. Her debut novel, Blurred Fates, was awarded the 2023 Sarton Award and the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award in Contemporary Fiction. Her second novel, The Other Side of Nothing, was selected as a Zibby Summer Read and awarded the 2024 IPPY Gold for Popular Fiction. Anastasia serves as Director of Programming for the San Diego Writers Festival, sits on the board of the International Memoir Association, and volunteers as a mentor for the literary nonprofit So Say We All. She lives in San Diego with her husband and their empty-nest rescue dog, Charlie.

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