MOCA TALKS – Worlds of Wonder: A Conversation with Abigail Hing Wen
May 8, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) invites you to a captivating conversation with Abigail Hing Wen—New York Times bestselling author, producer, and director—as she shares her multifaceted journey across literature, film, and artificial intelligence. Best known for her breakout Loveboat series and her latest bestseller Kisses, Codes and Conspiracies, Wen is a trailblazer at the intersection of storytelling and technology.
From Silicon Valley to Hollywood, Wen will reflect on how her experiences as a creative producer and woman-in-tech leader have shaped her bold and imaginative body of work. She’ll also offer an exclusive first look at her exciting upcoming projects: The Vale — Origins, a hybrid live-action and animated short film starring award-winning actress and singer Lea Salonga, and her forthcoming middle-grade novel The Vale—both of which explore the healing power of imagination through a virtual reality world crafted by a grieving inventor family.
From AI-generated fantasy realms to teen thrillers, Wen’s storytelling continues to push boundaries and inspire audiences of all ages. The program will be moderated by Yifan Wu, MOCA’s Senior Director of Events and Operations.
About Abigail Hing Wen
Abigail Hing Wen is the New York Times best-selling author of multiple novels and a film producer and director. Her first novel, Loveboat, Taipei, has been adapted as the movie Love in Taipei, now on Netflix. Her latest novel Kisses, Codes and Conspiracies, a thriller and romantic comedy novel, features three teens on the run through the Bay Area and is an instant National Best Seller, USA Today Best Seller, and Amazon Editor’s Pick for YA Book of the Month. Abigail directed her first short film starring Lea Salonga, a prequel to her middle-grade debut THE VALE, coming September 2025, and featuring an inventor family that builds an AI-generated virtual world. She serves on the board of Harvardwood.
Abigail is a frequent keynote speaker for young people, including Y’Allfest, US Presidential Scholars, the Los Altos High Writer’s Week, and Brooklyn Public Schools, as well as libraries, schools, and bookstores around the country.
About The Vale – Novel
Thirteen-year-old Bran Joseph Lee has spent half his life building the Vale, an immersive, AI-generated, virtual-reality environment using technology created by his inventor parents. It’s a lush fantasy world complete with a Blue Forest, a Castle, and adventures with his mushroom-obsessed Elf named Gnomly – a much better place to spend his days compared to his real life, where his parents have suffered through the failed launches of one invention after another.
Bran wants nothing more than to see his Elves come fully to life, a hope that seems on the brink of reality when he enters the Vale in a multi-million dollar competition to fund its further development. But instead, things in the Vale begin to go wrong: The sunlight is fading. A beautiful girl appears from nowhere. A wizard is stealing from the Vale’s inhabitants. And the strangest part of all is that none of this is the young inventor’s doing.
Can Bran and Gnomly uncover the truth of what is happening before both their worlds are destroyed?
About The Vale — Origins
A grieving inventor family comes together through their son’s creativity in a virtual fantasy world of their own creation.
- Starring: Three-time Tony Award winner Lea Salonga
- Directed by: Abigail Hing Wen
- Animation Director: John Aoshima (Ultraman: Rising)
The Vale — Origins, a prequel short film, follows the Lee family, a grieving group of inventors in Silicon Valley who discover solace and reconnection through their young son’s creativity in The Vale, a virtual reality fantasy world they built together. The film seamlessly shifts between live-action and animation, blending reality and imagination in a visually stunning exploration of love, family, and resilience.