Novelist and screenwriter Kevin Kwan is a keen observer who can read the room and describe it in exacting detail. His language makes you feel like you&rsquo;re attending a fete and eavesdropping on intimate conversations. However, as part of reality&rsquo;s bigger picture where his role involves opening doors for Asian talent &mdash; he&rsquo;ll welcome anyone to be a part of the dialogue without reservation.

Unlike his status-obsessed characters whose mode of living relies on habitual comparison, Kevin Kwan favors cooperation especially in creativity. In a recent interview with the Guardian, he articulates his support for fellow authors, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that anything is competition in any way &mdash; we all have our stories to tell and they&rsquo;re all deserving.&rdquo; This becomes the jumping-off point of my conversation with the writer. How can anyone make privilege universal when it&rsquo;s essentially the root of gatekeeping?&nbsp;
 Kevin ponders and relates his response to the news about a 65-year-old Filipino-American woman who got attacked in New York for her ethnicity, &ldquo;That shook me for a few days because having been a New Yorker and knowing that very block where she walked on &mdash; that was unfathomable. Whether it&rsquo;s a book, or a TV script, or a film &mdash; everything I do is infused with diversity. It&rsquo;s my job to present and create stories and characters who are human and multifaceted. I feel like in that way, the attitudes will change. That&rsquo;s where I feel where I can help. I&rsquo;m very wary of playing the activist because I&rsquo;m not informed enough to discuss policy, but I try to amplify the writers who do &mdash; like Roxane Gay who is one of my favorite authors. She just wrote a brilliant essay on what&rsquo;s happening to Asians in America.&rdquo;
 Best known for his bestselling novel, Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin captured what wealth and excess look like in the East. Through his natural ability to intuit human foibles, he made affluence less antagonizing. I ask how he came up with the character of Astrid Leong whose beauty and taste leap off the page. &ldquo;I can tell you that a lot of people have claimed to be Astrid. It&rsquo;s very amusing because they&rsquo;re all wrong,&rdquo; he laughs. &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s so alive to people who read about her because she&rsquo;s 100% inspired by a real person. The real Astrid really does wear Antwerp Six and Yves Saint Laurent couture. She is really this lovely, lovely person who had the misfortune of being born into a situation where she is judged, first of all, for her wealth and not for who she is.&rdquo;

Kevin&rsquo;s characters come across as larger than life, but little do people know that they&rsquo;re not exempt from feeling small &mdash; more so that they occupy a micro-universe teeming with all the big names. This storyline resonated to millions of readers around the world, and its success led to the creation of two more sequels and a movie adaptation which he executively produced with an all-Asian cast &mdash; a high-risk, high-reward move that silenced whitewashing naysayers.
 What followed after the trilogy was his novella, Sex and Vanity, which will also be adapted into a movie by Sony Pictures. Together with The Emperor of Malibu, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems &mdash; the influx of production and screenwriting projects made Kevin pack his bags for Los Angeles after 22 years of living in New York.
 As far as his life is concerned, cities are like chapters that reflect his personal gestation. Singapore is where he witnessed the faded glamor of old wealth. Born into a Chinese-Singaporean family, Kevin grew up in a multigenerational compound sitting on top of a hill and overlooking a panoramic view of the city. Even as a young boy, he already employed his powers of observation as he watched his paternal grandmother&rsquo;s guests stop by for tea &mdash; only to discover later that they&rsquo;re not your typical visitors; they were artists, countesses, and people of a renowned ilk.
 This will all change when his father transplanted the Kwan family to suburban Texas when he was 11 years old. Though the experience embodied the American dream, it marked the absence of excitement that Kevin craved. To satisfy his yearning for a dynamic locale &mdash; he moved to New York in 1995 to attend the Parsons School of Design. In the early days, Kevin describes himself as &ldquo;totally different.&rdquo; Admittedly a &ldquo;mordant introvert,&rdquo; he was always dressed in black pieces from Rick Owens and Comme des Gar&ccedil;ons. New York&rsquo;s intricate social layers gave Kevin the perfect foreground to complement his preference to stay in the background. He shares, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s always been a factor in my life. I grew up in a household where visitors were coming all the time to visit my grandparents. I was always just quietly observing. I think a lot of that hasn&rsquo;t changed. I&rsquo;m still very much an observer rather than an active participant.&rdquo;

When he rose to fame, however, he had to compromise. &ldquo;When you become someone that&rsquo;s known, and people throw a party for you, and you&rsquo;re the guest of honor &mdash; there&rsquo;s a pressure to perform,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s been something I had to get used to. It doesn&rsquo;t traumatize me in any way. I&rsquo;m naturally curious. I love meeting people. I feel privileged to be in the situation. But at the same time, I don&rsquo;t encourage it. You know what I mean?&rdquo;
 Perhaps, this penchant for introspection factored in his decision to renew his zip code. In order to minimize distractions and focus on writing, he examined all the moving parts and rearranged them somewhere new. Whether Kevin is aware of it or not &mdash; he has mastered the art of laying out sequences and setting up scenes where his stories could find fertile ground and take root.
 As we speak, LA&rsquo;s space and sunshine provide a fitting backdrop for his growing appreciation of nature and recreation. He tells me, &ldquo;I hike all the time. Hiking has been my salvation during this pandemic because I&rsquo;ve been able to really be outdoors.&rdquo; In between trails, he notices that his inner landscape is also shifting and blending in with the surroundings. &ldquo;Fiction writing came naturally to me. Screenwriting is a different animal. It&rsquo;s all about dialogue,&rdquo; Kevin shares. &ldquo;In movies and TV, one page is equivalent to one minute of showtime. So, if you&rsquo;re making a one-hour TV show &mdash; it&rsquo;s like a puzzle. You have to fit in all these things, plotlines, and characters in 60 pages, whereas in a novel, I have the ultimate freedom to make a chapter as long as I want.&rdquo;
 Being stationed in LA has provided Kevin plenty of professional opportunities, but if you ask him where he&rsquo;s heading for pleasure after the pandemic, he quickly answers, &ldquo;Palawan,&rdquo; for its crystal waters. Captivated by international summer playgrounds like Capri where Sex and Vanity takes place, Kevin is anticipating a future where he can again immerse in decadence. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, but Santa Monica beach is not the same,&rdquo; he quips.

Everything I do is infused with diversity. It&rsquo;s my job to present and create stories and characters who are human and multifaceted.&nbsp;

Kevin Kwan Is Setting the Scene for Asian Talent

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