Despite the appearance of sudden and seemingly universal praise for her most recent young adult novel, Malinda Lo’s work has always been this good.

Independent booksellers have known it for years, especially in the Bay Area. She’s been an indie darling since 2009, when her then-groundbreaking sapphic retelling of the Cinderella story, “Ash,” was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. But now that her most recent novel, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” has won the 2021 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the 2022 Stonewall Book Award, and was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, it seems that the secret is finally out.

“It has definitely been a lot,” Lo said. “It’s so weird. But life has a way of keeping me humble.”

The book that has garnered all this newfound fame is a historical fiction set in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown. Following Lily Hu, a queer teen in the insular Chinese American community, teen readers are invited into queer bars, a male impersonator’s apartment, a Chinese American beauty pageant and, of course, San Francisco as it looked and smelled and sounded in 1954.

“I over-researched for sure,” she said. “It was really fun to go back in time, even though I would not have wanted to live in the 1950s at all. It was fascinating to research it.”

Through archival images, extensive reading and interviews, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” paints a portrait of historic San Francisco that’s as loving as it is clear-eyed.

“I feel like San Francisco has always been a city of change. Not, like, incremental change. Like, starting with the original Gold Rush,” Lo said. “The city has gone through so many transformations. It’s gone through so many boom-and-bust cycles. It’s so often on the edge of so many cultural developments. San Francisco is so much about change, and that’s why it’s such an amazing and vibrant city, and it’s also why people of every generation then get so depressed and are like, ‘My city is changing! Beyond my recognition!’ I think for every generation, this city changes around them.”

Lo lived in San Francisco from 2000 to 2015, but wrote “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” in Massachusetts, where she still lives with her wife. In writing it, she felt like she got to revisit the city she loved, an opportunity she relished.

“I love writing a complicated sense of place with lots of layers,” she said. “I didn’t want to write about it as if it were some fantasy wonderland. I wanted it to have its scuff marks, because that’s what makes it unique and real. That’s what I find interesting writing about a place and also about characters.”

Lily Hu, the novel’s protagonist, is duly complicated. Her queerness is new and frightening to her, and so is her burgeoning relationship with Kath, a girl from school. Kath already has a questionable reputation, since she was friends with a girl outed in the most dramatic fashion, a fate Lily is terrified of experiencing. Her fear of surveillance from her own community echoes the Chinese American and also queer fear of government surveillance happening within the timeline of the novel brilliantly.

“The issue with coming to terms with queer sexuality is that it has been suppressed by our society for so long that there’s this extra layer of shame,” Lo said. Lily, who at the start of the novel has never even (knowingly) met a queer person before, does not know what to make of her same-sex attraction, an experience that many gay and lesbian teens still relate to. “If there’s one thing I would tell a queer teen today is that it’s normal to feel weird about it at first because society has taught you that it’s wrong. But it is society that is wrong. Not you.”

由于COVID-19大流行,全国巡演might have enjoyed to celebrate this loved and lauded book never materialized. But, fortunately, she now gets to return to San Francisco for a series of events, starting with San Francisco author Charlie Jane Anders’ long-running, queer-safe and joyful reading series, Writers With Drinks.

“Malinda Lo rocked our stage when she first appeared at Writers With Drinks, but now her appearance feels even more fitting: an illustrious National Book Award winner who writes about storied San Francisco nightlife reading at the Make Out Room in S.F.,” said Anders. “This is going to be a historic night.”

Indeed, for Lo it’s full circle.

“One of the reasons I was so bummed to have my book release during the pandemic was that I could not do a book launch in San Francisco,” Lo said. “Weirdly, it has worked out that my first in-person event for this book will actually be in San Francisco. So that’s just amazing.”

Last Night at the Telegraph Club
By Malinda Lo
(Dutton Books for Young Readers; 432 pages; $11.99)

Writers With Drinks with guest host Celeste Chan:In person. Featuring Malinda Lo, Khan Wong, Betsy Aoki, Sumiko Saulson. 7 p.m. Saturday, March 12. Pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $5-$20. Make Out Room,322522nd St., S.F.www.writerswithdrinks.com

YA @ Books Inc. presents Malinda Lo in conversation with Sarah Zarr:In person. 2 p.m. Sunday, March 13. Free. Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave., S.F.www.booksinc.net