Rachel Khong + Mary H.K. Choi: My Dear You

Moderating this discussion is New York Times bestselling author Mary H.K. Choi. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by Mar. 26 to request.

Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]

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From the author of New York Times bestseller Real Americans, a brilliant short story collection about love, life, and the anguish of becoming oneself in a time when it’s so easy to be someone else

The characters in My Dear You find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the absurd: The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. A factory worker decides to befriend a sex doll she is tasked with selling.

These stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on the particular awkwardness of dating in your thirties and asking: What does it mean to be an Asian woman in America? Or an American? Or a human? Along the way, the characters stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, the robotic, and the immortal.

Playful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for life, however you define it, My Dear You takes on dating, marriage, and the pressures of having or not having children; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. At their very core, they are tales of love in its many forms: being in love when you’re not supposed to be, or not being in love but wishing you were; failing at dating apps or finding yourself in weird but wonderful lifelong friendships; struggling in heaven to remember your loved ones.

Ranging from the sinister to the tender, these witty and expertly paced stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching for your best friend the next.

Photo credit: Andrea Lo

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. Real Americans, her second novel, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2018, Khong founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. With friends, she teaches creative writing as The Dream Side. She lives in Los Angeles.

Mary H.K. Choi is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record and Yolk. Her fourth novel, Pool House, is slated for release on June 9, 2026.

Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, New York and GQ. Previously, she was a culture correspondent for Vice News and has written comic books for Marvel and DC. She is currently developing her books for film and TV from New York, where she lives. Learn more about her at choitotheworld.com and @choitotheworld on all social, as well as Maryhkchoi.substack for her newsletter.

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