Weekly Program - "The Hunt for General Tso"

Why you should listen

Jennifer 8. Lee is an American journalist who previously worked for The New York Times. She is also the co-founder and president of the literary studio Plympton, as well as a producer on The Search for General Tso, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. As a metropolitan reporter for the New York Times, shewas known for turning in sparkling and intricately reported stories of city life. NPR called her a "conceptual scoop" artist -- finding and getting details on new lifestyle trends that we all want to talk about.

Her fascination with American Chinese food led her to research and write The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, in which she solves some of the enduring mysteries around this indigenous cuisine, including such questions as: "Who is General Tso and why are we eating his chicken?" and "Why do Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas?"

Jennifer was born in New York City, and educated at Harvard University.  In addition to her move, "The Search for General Tso", she has written works including The Fortune Cookie Chronicles; Adventures in the World of Chinese Food.  The literary studio, Plympton, innovates in digital publishing. Through partnerships, they are behind Recovering the Classics, helped launch the Twitter Fiction Festival, run the literary CODEX Hackathon, and have created a curated mobile reading service called Rooster.

Their partners span the gamut from large to small, established and emerging. They include the New York Public Library, Amazon, the White House, Audible, Twitter, Harvard Book Store, HarperCollins, Warby Parker, the Digital Public Library of America, the Creative Action Network, Worb Corp, among many others. Always, their mission is to push the edge in what the next generation of great storytelling should be in the digital age.  A number of their DailyLit stories have been noted in The Best American Short Stories series. A Rooster app has been developed and is called a “game changing startup.”