CURRENT AUTHORS
JLLA/JLP represents a select group of Asian authors whose work we are developing for English-language publication and international readers.
BEFRIENDING RISK
A Practical Guide to Turning Uncertainty into Advantage and Growth
Hien Le
Hien Le is a finance and risk management professional with more than 20 years of experience across Vietnam and New Zealand. Her career spans investment fund management, financial advisory, banking, and enterprise risk governance.
She began her career in investment management and later worked at KPMG Vietnam, specializing in financial modeling, business valuation, and complex asset analysis. At OCB Bank, she led the implementation of Basel II, helping align the bank’s risk management practices with international standards. After relocating to New Zealand, she worked with ICBC New Zealand, Kiwibank, and ASB Bank, specializing in capital, market, and liquidity risk.
Hien currently serves as Director of Advisory & Training Services at ARFQuant, where she helps organizations identify, assess, and manage risk and strengthen their approach to governance and leadership. She is also the founder of 100 BizTalks and has been recognized as a Top 50 international speaker by Next Top Speaker.
She is the author of Befriending Risk: A Practical Guide to Turning Uncertainty into Advantage and Growth, which draws on her professional experience to present risk management as a practical leadership discipline for navigating uncertainty, building resilience, and identifying opportunity.
She holds a degree in Corporate Finance from the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, a master’s degree in Financial Mathematics–Actuarial Science from ISFA in France, and the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification. She lives and works in New Zealand.
THE SWEET VANILLA ICE CREAM SHOP
Every Child Has the Right to Dream
Việt Thùy Giang (Penny Giang)
Dư Phương Liên (Lotus Lien)
Penny Giang, born in 1986, is a Vietnamese female author. Few people know that her primary occupation is as an office employee. However, because of her deep passion for writing and her special love for children, she has always made use of every available hour to study and pursue her path toward becoming a professional author, specifically in the field of children’s books.
In 2024, following personal challenges in her marriage, she published her debut book, Kim Cương Hạnh Phúc (Happy Diamond). Although the book was aimed at adults—particularly women—she was surprised to find that it received a particularly warm response from young readers. This response became the motivation for her to continue writing and to embark on a new path: creating literature for children.
Drawing on innocent childhood memories, the delightful children she has met, and the simple, charming stories of everyday life, Penny Giang collaborated with author Dư Phương Liên (pen name: Lotus Lien) to write and successfully publish Tiệm Kem Vani Ngọt Ngào (The Sweet Vanilla Ice Cream Shop)—her first work of children’s literature. The book was released in Vietnam by the Vietnam Women’s Publishing House in May 2026 and was reprinted in August of the same year.
Tiệm Kem Vani Ngọt Ngào marks a significant turning point in Penny’s creative journey. She intends to dedicate the coming years to children’s literature, aiming to bring joy, laughter, imagination, and beautiful memories to young readers, while also preserving a pure, sweet corner of childhood for readers of all ages.
Lotus Lien is a Vietnamese author born in 1981. At the age of 26, she began battling a serious brain tumor that progressively impaired her hearing, vision, and mobility.
Refusing to surrender to adversity, she gradually rebuilt her life through her love of writing, her perseverance, and her faith in the goodness of the human spirit.
Lotus Lien specializes in writing memoirs. To date, she has published three works centered on her journey of facing illness, overcoming hardship, and spreading positive values.
For The Sweet Vanilla Ice Cream Shop (Tiệm Kem Vani Ngọt Ngào), Lotus Lien collaborated with Việt Thùy Giang (pen name Penny Giang) to develop and refine the book. She contributed ideas, offered content suggestions, provided critical feedback, and edited the manuscript, working alongside Penny to shape the narrative and refine the work for young readers.
Lotus Lien’s wish is to quietly accompany Penny on a journey into the world of childhood, helping to create stories that are pure, loving, and meaningful for children.
Together, the two authors created The Sweet Vanilla Ice Cream Shop—a heartwarming story about dreams, perseverance, family love, and the courage to start anew.
ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO GET YOU
Cui Xiaorui
Science Fiction Writer, Member of the Shanghai Writers Association
Ree Cui is an emerging force in contemporary Chinese science fiction. Her writing delves into the intricate relationships between technology, human emotion, and identity within vividly imagined near-future settings. Blending speculative imagination with a refined literary style, she creates narratives that bridge the deeply personal realms of human experience with the frontiers of artificial intelligence.
Cui’s critically acclaimed novella, AI Continuation: City of Generations, was selected for the prestigious 2020 Shenzhen–Hong Kong Biennale anthology Nine Cities, Ten Thousand Futures, curated by Liu Cixin (author of The Three-Body Problem), and earned her the anthology’s Jury Award. Her full-length novel, In Summer of the Future, was honored as an Amazon Kindle Book of the Year, a campaign for which she also served as spokesperson. Her short stories, such as Ice under Deep Sea and Mind Crossing, have been published in Science Fiction Cube, with Ice under Deep Sea receiving a nomination for the 19th Baihua Literature Award in the Science Fiction category. Her most recent novel, Blue Hourglass, was released in 2024, and her short story collection, One Hundred Ways to Get You, was featured in Forbes China’s cultural recommendations.
Cui Xiaorui holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Capital Normal University and is proficient in English and French. She began her writing career in college, initially gaining recognition for her youth literature and campus fiction during a peak period for the genre; her debut novel Jin Nian Xiu Shi, published in 2012, quickly became a signature early work. Her second novel Wei Lai Zhi Xia was published in 2016. Following her studies, she gained professional experience at a 4A advertising agency and later in the investment sector, focusing on hard-tech industries. In 2019, she planned to further her education in business administration and finance. In 2022, she obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Hong Kong, demonstrating a consistent ability to balance her professional ambitions with her thriving literary career.
THANH TRÚC AND THE GODS OF SOUTHERN LAND
Book One of the Vietnamese Mythology Library
Xuân Sang
Nguyen Xuan Sang is a Vietnamese author, screenwriter, and founder of Xuan Sang Animation Studio (XSA). Born in 1995, he has built his career around reimagining Vietnamese mythology, folklore, and traditional legends for contemporary audiences through both literature and visual media.
His debut novel, Thanh Trúc và Thần Chú Khắc Nhập (published in English as Thanh Truc and the Gods of Southern Land), was published in Vietnam by NXB Tri Thức and is the first installment of The Vietnamese Mythology Library — an interconnected multi-book series designed to organize and modernize Vietnam’s mythological traditions into a unified narrative universe for new generations of readers. The series is planned to span seven novels, with characters and legends drawn from across the full breadth of Vietnamese folklore.
His long-term vision extends beyond the page: Sang is developing an integrated franchise across novels, animation, and film, leveraging his background as an animation studio founder and producer to bring Vietnamese mythological storytelling to international audiences.