Will Stevens

I hope you all had a wonderful Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, and if you’re still reminiscing, I have a way that you can Send Chinatown Love!

I was fortunate and honored to be a part of the Send Chinatown Love cookbook, Made Here, which has been chosen as a best cookbook of 2023 by Bon Appetit, Vogue, Forbes, Food Network, The LA Times, and more!

I was the Product Manager for the e-commerce page and a photographer for a few restaurants, but I was just a small part of the project. So many other amazing photographers and countless team members were behind the scenes to make this project a reality! I’m honored to have been part of this project alongside a passionate and driven team to produce this book that helps further the mission of Send Chinatown Love.

If you or anyone is interested in learning to cook new recipes, seeing fantastic photos, and reading great write-ups of many excellent restaurants in New York City’s Chinatowns, get this book! Supplies are limited; act fast and pick up your copy of Made Here.

Here are a few samples of the photos I contributed to the project!

Writing has always been difficult for me. Growing up with dyslexia, school was hard for me, particularly with written language. My learning style for writing was more about forced memorization than how I was instructed. To this day, I completely spell out each word I write in my head, making writing laborious. Changing my effort to slowly chucking out words instead of my thoughts flowing onto the page. On the flip side, the unspoken world of how technical systems come together made sense to me. Ideas, concepts, and systems just snapped into focus with vivid clarity. I often found it frustrating to share my excitement or find people to converse with about these concepts. I would get frustrated and mad at them.
Later, I realized I was frustrated at my inability to articulate these concepts. I still struggle with this today, and I am constantly trying to improve how I converse with people to share my joy in discovering these seemingly invisible connections. So that brings me back to writing. It’s frustratingly slow, and I only sometimes feel like I can express myself. However, the same can be similar when speaking, although it has less friction. This is precisely why I’ve decided to write more. I aim to improve my writing by putting this out in the world. I know these posts/stories will be rough around the edges initially, but I hope they will become more articulate and eloquent with time. The only way I’ve ever been able to get better at something is by being open to being wrong, vulnerable, and open to improvement. This will be a journey, but I want to improve. Because I’ll see the ripple of improvement throughout my other endeavors.