Abigail Hing Wen

Abigail Hing Wen (邢立美; born 1977) is an American writer, film producer, lawyer and speaker. Her debut young adult novel, Loveboat, Taipei, was purchased in a multi-house auction by HarperCollins in a two-book deal, along with Loveboat Reunion. It debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List where it remained for multiple weeks and has been adapted for film by ACE Entertainment and released through Paramount+ as of August 10, 2023.

Loveboat, Taipei follows the journey of an Asian American teen whose parents send her from Ohio to Taipei to study Mandarin for the summer at a program nicknamed Loveboat. It is a coming-of-age story exploring love, family, multifaceted identity and intersectionality. Wen's companion novel, Loveboat Reunion, follows two of the main characters from Loveboat, Taipei as they reconnect and write their own futures on a wild, unexpected reunion. The novel draws inspiration from Wen's work in Silicon Valley, with a girl trying to navigate her fashion interests and interests in AI. The third novel, Loveboat Forever, (November 7, 2023) follows the gang and their community through new coming of age journeys. Wen’s newest novel, Kisses, Codes, and Conspiracies, will be released on August 13, 2024.

Early life
Abigail Hing Wen was born Abigail Geraldine Lim Hing in Wheeling, West Virginia, as a daughter of ethnic Chinese immigrants. She grew up in Solon, Ohio.

Education
Wen attended Solon High School, where she was the valedictorian. She was selected as one of 120 U.S. Presidential Scholars, high school seniors invited to Washington, D.C., to meet then President Bill Clinton. As a Presidential Scholar, she was invited by the Taiwanese government to attend the study tour program at Chien Tan, which eventually formed the setting of her first novel, Loveboat, Taipei. Wen studied at Harvard University, earning her B.A. magna cum laude in government and international relations. She wrote her senior thesis on China under Professor Roderick MacFarquhar. She served on the student governing board of the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP). Wen earned her JD at Columbia Law School and MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, studying under Kathi Appelt, A.M. Jenkins, and Martine Leavitt.

Career
Prior to moving to Silicon Valley, Wen spent ten years in Washington, D.C., working on Capitol Hill for the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and in private practice at the international law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell and Covington & Burling.

Literary career
In 2019, Wen's debut novel, Loveboat, Taipei, sold in a multi-house auction to HarperCollins, for a two-book deal. It debuted at #9 on the New York Times Bestseller List where it remained for multiple weeks. Loveboat, Taipei was published on January 7, 2020, by HarperTeen and has been adapted for screen as “Love in Taipei” streaming on Paramount+ as of August 10, 2023, for which Wen served as an executive producer. The story is inspired by Wen's experience on the Love Boat program she attended the summer after her freshman year at Harvard. Wen and Loveboat, Taipei have been featured in NBC Bay Area Show, World Journal , the South China Morning Post, Cosmopolitan, and People en Español. The novel appeared on a number of Most Anticipated lists including The Boston Globe. Book Riot, Bustle, BuzzFeed, The UK Evening Standard, The Nerd Daily, Seventeen, and She Reads. Loveboat, Taipei was selected as a Barnes & Noble Young Adult Book Club Pick and it appeared at number 1 on Cosmopolitan's 25 Best Audiobooks of 2020 list.

“Love in Taipei” stars Ashley Liao and Ross Butler and was ranked a Top #10 comedy on Paramount+. Wen made a brief cameo in the film. Wen, as executive producer, and the film have been covered by The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Variety, Deadline, CBS Mornings, People, and AsAmNews.

In June 2021, Wen was featured in the Forbes AI Ethics series, where she talked about her role in Partnership on AI, as well as her upcoming literary works. Her second novel, Loveboat Reunion, was published on January 25, 2022, as well as The Idiom Algorithm the same month, a short story she wrote for the Macmillan Serendipity anthology. A third novel, Loveboat Forever, set six years after Loveboat, Taipei, was published on November 7, 2023. Wen’s newest novel, Kisses, Codes, and Conspiracies, inspired by The Idiom Algorithm, will be released on August 13, 2024.

Technology
Wen works in venture capital and artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley.

Wen serves as a board observer for Two Bit Circus, a Los Angeles-based virtual reality entertainment company. She serves as co-chair of the Partnership on AI Expert Working Group for Fairness, Transparency and Accountability.

Wen hosts the podcast Intel on AI. Her guests have included founders in the field, such as Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun, as well as Google DeepMind, US Congress, The World Bank and leading AI faculty at MIT, Stanford, and University of California, Berkeley.

Novels

 * Loveboat, Taipei. HarperCollins (2020)
 * Loveboat Reunion. HarperCollins (2022)
 * Loveboat Forever, HarperCollins (2023)

Short stories

 * The Idiom Algorithm. Macmillan Serendipity anthology (2022)