Novelist Kyla Zhao, a 26-year-old Singapore native who moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford University when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, used the extra alone time that came with stay-home orders to work on her writing.
After graduation and a short stint as a fashion writer, she started working as an analyst in the male-dominated Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. Now her third novel, May the Best Player Win, is scheduled to come out this fall.
Q: Can you talk about how you came up with the ideas for your most recent book, Valley Verified?
A: A few months after graduation I made the switch from the high fashion industry to the high tech industry. With that came a lot of impostor syndrome and a massive confidence crisis.
I was feeling really down about myself, and I didn’t think I could really confide in anyone, because all my friends seemed so successful and accomplished.
So I kept it all bottled up within myself. But at some point, I just had to get all these feelings out of me, so I started writing this story of this young woman who works in fashion in New York City, but because of circumstance, she’s forced to move across the country to Silicon Valley to take on a new role and a tech startup. And she’s like a fish out of water.
Q: How does the book touch on themes from your own life experience?
A: There’s just so many amazingly smart people here [in Silicon Valley], I think impostor syndrome is a lot more common than we realize.
I expected that only people around my age would relate to my book. But then I realized that people from different ages, from different stages of their careers, saw how much my story resonated with them. That’s honestly the best feeling because I wrote this book by myself, and it’s in some way inspired by my own experience. To know that my experience is something that other people could relate to as well, that’s a really awesome feeling for any writer.
Another theme that’s really important to me in this book is exploring what it means to be a woman in a very male-dominated industry. And especially how women can support one another.
I think growing up, women or girls have been taught to see one another as competition. Only one girl gets to be the homecoming queen, only one girl gets to be the prettiest, only one girl gets to date the most popular guy. And so from a young age, we think of it as a zero sum game. In order for one of us to succeed, it means that another woman cannot succeed.
That’s why in my book, you have this cast of female characters, they are very different on paper, but they learn to accept one another, and they learn to come together to support one another.
Q: Many people will be going on vacation in the next few weeks, and might be looking for something to read while they’re laying on the beach. Why might someone want to pick up Valley Verified?
A: I describe it as Legally Blonde set in Silicon Valley. It’s about a woman who goes from fashion to tech. These are two fascinating industries, and because I have personal experience with both I’m able to craft an authentic portrayal of these two worlds and all the niche references.
A lot of people have told me that my main character is someone who is very relatable. She’s not perfect, she doesn’t always make the right decisions, but she does try her best. And she has a good head on her shoulders.
Because this is set at a tech startup, you have this ensemble cast of characters who are all very quirky in their own ways. Even though people might recognize some stereotypical features of the tech industry in them, they are much more than a caricature of what people imagine tech people to be like.
Tech billionaires are becoming more mainstream celebrities. You see Jeff Bezos rubbing shoulders with the Kardashians, and Elon Musk is just doing what Elon Musk does. People are getting so much more fascinated with the ecosystem, but it can be very opaque sometimes, and my book is just like a really nice entryway into that. You see this ecosystem through the eyes of an outsider who is sometimes just as bewildered by what is going on as the rest of us.
Q: You graduated from Stanford and got a job working in tech, so what made you want to be an author as well?
A: I never saw myself becoming an author, but during the pandemic I was in my third year at Stanford University, then the pandemic broke out, and I wanted to go home to be with my family in Singapore but this was also a time when every country was shutting down borders, so I decided to stay put in California. For most of 2020 I was living alone and I got very homesick, very lonely, and also just kind of depressed.
I just got so tired of seeing Asians like myself be portrayed in such a negative, derogatory manner. I really wanted us to be portrayed in a more vibrant and fun and joyful manner. That’s when I got the motivation to start writing my own story, set in my home country of Singapore, it became my very first novel, The Fraud Squad, published in early 2023.
It’s kind of like Crazy Rich Asians meets The Devil Wears Prada. It’s really fun.
Q: Your next book is coming out soon, what will May the Best Player Win be about?
A: I describe my next book as a family-friendly version of The Queen’s Gambit, without the drugs and everything, so parents can read it with their kids. It is also set in the Bay Area. It’s about a chess player who makes a bet with a sexist rival, that girls can be as good as boys at the game. That is coming out in September.
I actually wrote the first draft over one month in November 2020, the election month. I just felt very jaded and cynical, seeing grown men say such hateful things, so I really wanted to write a book that was from the perspective of someone younger, someone who still has that youthful innocence.
I grew up playing chess, I was on Singapore’s national junior squad, so I think the commonality between this book and Valley Verified is that it explores what it’s like to be a girl, or woman, in a very male-dominated space.
My main character in this next book also has to deal with people doubting her abilities just because of her gender. She has to find a way to prove herself, but as she tries to prove herself and as she tries to win the bet, performance anxiety begins to creep in. I hope that kids in Silicon Valley, or even adults, can relate to some of what my main characters going through.
Kyla Zhao
Age: 26
Position: Author, tech worker
Education: Stanford University
Residence: San Jose
Family: Parents in Singapore, brother at UC Berkeley
Five things about Kyla
1. Has to have three drinks when writing: coffee, water, and something special
2. Loves cold desserts: if it’s cake, it should be ice cream cake
3. Goes to a pilates studio where she is the youngest but least fit
4. Writes in size seven font, so she doesn’t get tempted to edit before a full draft is done
5. Comfort movie is The Devil Wears Prada
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