me make sense of my very retrograde but still strong conviction that I was irreversibly tainted, used, and dirty. “Hey, Juniper?” Athena stopped me one afternoon on my way back from the dining hall. Back then, Athena was the only one who used my full name, which was a habit she would sustain through adulthood, calling Tashas “Natasha” and Bills “William” as if this insistence on formality would elevate everyone in the conversation. (It did.) She touched my arm. Her fingers were smooth and cool. “Are you okay?” And maybe it was because I’d been holding it all in for so long, or because she was the first person at Yale who’d really looked at me and noticed that something wasn’t right, but I burst immediately into loud, ugly tears. “Come on,” she said, rubbing gentle circles on my back. “Let’s go to my room.” Athena held my hand whileI recounted the whole thing through hiccupping sobs. She talked me through my options, made me look through the campus resources list, and helped me decide if I wanted to seek counseling (yes) or report Andrew to the campus police to try and press charges (no). She walked with me to my first appointment with Dr. Gaily, whereI got a diagnosis for my anxiety, unpacked all this shit I’d been carrying since my father’s death, and learned coping mechanisms that I still use today. She left takeout meals from the cafeteria outside my door when she noticed I hadn’t gone to dinner. She texted me puppy photos late at night captioned, Hope you dream of this! For two weeks, Athena Liu was my guardian angel. I thought she was so kind. I thought we would be friends forever. But freshman friendships don’t last. By our second semester, I was running in my own circles, and she in hers. We still smiled and waved when we passed each other in the dining hall. We still liked each other’s Facebook posts. But we weren’t talking for hours on the floors of our rooms, trading stories about authors we hoped to meet and literary scandals we’d read about on Twitter. We weren’t texting each other during class anymore. Perhaps, I thought, the enormity of what I’d shared had killed a proper friendship in the bud. There are appropriate levels to intimacy. You can’t break out “I think I was raped, but I don’t really know,” until at least three months in.
We all moved on. I forgot about Andrew, or at least buried him so deep in the back of my mind that he wouldn’t resurface until therapy sessions many years later. The freshman girl’s brain is startlingly capable of selective amnesia; I believe it is a survival reaction. I made new, closer friends, none of whom would ever know what had happened. My hickeys faded. I settled into life at Yale, stopped going to parties whereI made a fool of myself, and threw myself into my coursework. But then Athena’s first short story came out in one of Yale’s alt literary magazines, a pretentious rag titled Ouroboros. This was a big deal— freshmen never got published in Ouroboros, or soI heard, and we all bought copies to support her. I took my print volume up to my room to read. I felt a snarl of jealousy—I’d submitted my own story months ago and had been resoundingly rejected within a day—but I wanted to look like a good sport, soI thought I’d read enough to find a few particularly witty lines, and then quote them back at Athena the next timeI saw her. I flipped the issue open to page twelve, Athena’s story, and found my own words staring back at me. But they weren’t quite my words. Just my feelings, all of my confused and tangled thoughts, articulated in a clean, understated yet sophisticated style that I didn’t then have the eloquence to achieve. And the worst part was that I didn’t know, narrated the protagonist. I truly couldn’t tell if I’d been raped, if I’d wanted it, if anything had happened at all, if I was glad that nothing had happened, or if I wanted something to happen just soI could make it out to be more important than I was. The place between my legs is a lacuna. There is no memory, no shame, no pain. It’s all just gone. And I do not know what to do with the lack. I read the story from beginning to end, again and again, spotting more and more similarities every time, identifying personal details changed with either astounding laziness or indifference. The guy’s name was Anthony. The girl’s name was Jillian. They drank strawberry lemonade Svedka. They were in the same Ancient Philosophy section. He invited her over to watch The Hobbit. “I liked your story,” I told Athena at dinner; holding her gaze, daring her to deny it. I know what you did. She met my eyes, and gave me a polite, nothing smile—the one she would later give regularly to fans at signing tables. “Thank you, Juniper. That’s really kind of you to say.”
We never spoke about that story, or what happened with Andrew, again. Maybe it was a coincidence. We were small, fragile freshmen girls at a large university where such things are known to happen. My story isn’t remarkable. It is, in fact, utterly mundane. Not every girl has a rape story. But almost every girl has an “I’m not sure, I didn’t like it, but I can’t quite call it rape” story. I couldn’t, however, overlook the similarity between the phrases I’d used when describing my pain and the phrases Athena used in her story. I couldn’t unlink Athena’s prose from the memory of her doe-like brown eyes, blinking in sympathy as I told her every black, ugly thing in my heart between choked sobs. She’d stolen my story. I was convinced of it. She’d stolen my words right out of my mouth. She did the same to everyone around her for the entirety of her career, and honestly, if I’m supposed to feel bad about getting my revenge, then fuck that. Mother Witch COMES OUT TO A MODERATELY WARM RECEPTION—plenty of critical acclaim, but modest sales. We expected as much. It’s a novella, not a full-length novel—I couldn’t think of a way to build it out longer than forty thousand words—and the market for those is always smaller. I do a three-city tour at bookstores in DC, Boston, and NYC, where it’s easier to wrangle together an audience of book enthusiasts on any given Friday. These are well attended. No one asks any nasty questions about my racial bona fides. No one mentions the plagiarism scandal. The critical reception is good, in a faintly surprised way. From Kirkus, a starred review: “A quiet, heartrending tale of betrayal and innocence lost.” From Library Journal, also a starred review: “Juniper Song proves adept at handling mature themes in contexts entirely removed from World War One.” And our greatest achievement, in the New York Times, which I know Daniella had to pull strings to get: “If there were any suspicions that Juniper Song does not produce her own work, let Mother Witch settle those fears: this girl can write.” There’s something unsettling about all this calm. Things are too quiet, suffocatingly so, like the air before a thunderstorm. But I’m too relieved, too ready to believeI might have put all the trouble behind me. I’m already thinking about the next contract, about possible film options for current properties. Maybe Mother Witch isn’t blockbuster material, but you could
make a quiet prestige TV series with it. Something like Big Little Lies, or Little Fires Everywhere. Someone call Reese Witherspoon to produce. Someone tap Amy Adams to play the mother. Someone tap Anna Kendrick to play me. I let myself relax. I fill my head with dreams. After all this time, I finally stop hearing Athena’s ghost every timeI sit down to write. I should have known it wouldn’t last.
Sixteen TWO WEEKS AFTER MOTHER WITCH COMES OUT, ADELE SPARKS-SATO puts out a blog post titled “Mother Witch Is Also Plagiarized, and I’ve Fucking Had It with June Hayward.” I glimpse the Google Alert just as I’m about to step into the shower. I sit back on my bed, clutching my towel tight against my chest as I click the link. Like many of you, I was curious when Eden Press announced June Hayward, writing as Juniper Song, was releasing a stand-alone novella. After the allegations surrounding The Last Front, I had doubts whether she could write something of equal quality, especially now as there are no remaining works of Athena’s to steal from—or so we all thought. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I turned to the first page. Mother Witch opens with identical lines from a story that Athena Liu workshopped at the Asian American Writers’ Collective summer workshop in 2018. Such overlap is not coincidental. Here’s the proof. Below, Adele has included screenshots of Google Docs and photographs of printed story outlines with handwritten notes in the comments, along with so many corroborating dates and accounts that such an accusation would be impossible to fake. In case anyone thinks this is some elaborate hoax, I’ve reached out to eight different attendees of the workshop that year. Not everyone still has their printouts from that summer, but everyone has gone on record as remembering Athena’s work. They’ve attached their names to this write-up as endorsements. If you won’t take my word for it, consider the weight of our combined testimonies. The debate over the authorship of The Last Front has been fraught and troubling for many in the Asian diaspora community. A lot of us, myself included, did not want to
believe anyone could do something so vile or selfish. And a lot of us were willing to give June Hayward the benefit of the doubt. With this evidence, there’s no longer a question about Hayward’s intentions. Hayward; her agent, Brett Adams; and her team at Eden Press have a choice now to make about accountability, transparency, and their supposed commitment to justice. The rest of us will be watching. I lower my phone. The water’s been running for a good ten minutes, but I can’t summon the willpower to go turn it off. All I can do is sit at the edge of my bed, breathing in and out as the world narrows to a pinprick around me. When I first saw Geoff’s @AthenaLiusGhost tweets, I spiraled into an hours-long anxiety attack. This time, my reaction feels strangely muted. I feel like I’m submerged underwater. Everything sounds and feels wrong, distorted. Somehow, I am both more calm and more terrified than before. Perhaps it’s because this time, there is no question about what will happen next. This time the truth is incontrovertible, and it’ll make no difference whether I scramble to control the public narrative or not. I don’t have to wonder what my friends and colleagues are thinking about me, or whether they’ll believe my denials. It’s all there in black and white. What happens next will happen, no matter what I do or say. I put my phone on “do not disturb” mode. I slide my iPad into a drawer. I shut down my laptop. I grab a bottle of whisky from atop my fridge— WhistlePig, a gift from Daniella for three consecutive months on the NYT bestseller list—and settle down in front of my couch, watching old episodes of Friends whileI chug straight from the bottle, until I’m out for the night. Let the internet do its work while I’m gone. When I face the noise, I’d rather it come all at once. I WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO SEE I’VE LOST A THOUSAND FOLLOWERS. The metric is still dropping; nines turning to eights before my eyes. This time, I don’t have to search my name to track the conversation. It’s right there, all over my timeline and in my mentions. I fucking knew it about Juniper Song. June Hayward strikes again! Does this bitch never stop?
Wake up publishing, the White Witch is back. Last time, I’d kept my social media accounts active—partly so that I could stay tuned to what was being said, and partly becauseI feared deactivation would be an admission of guilt. This time, my guilt is a foregone conclusion—all I can hope for now is damage control, by which I mean managing threats to my personal safety. I delete my Twitter account. I set my Instagram to private. I turn off notifications from my publicly available email address. Certainly I’m getting death threats, but at least this wayI won’t know about them the second they arrive. Someone edits my Wikipedia page to read: “Juniper Song Hayward is a ‘novelist,’ serial plagiarizer, and flaming racist.” That particular line is gone within an hour—Wikipedia has minimal civility requirements, I suppose— but the “Plagiarism” section of my biography remains as follows: “In March 2020, literary critic Adele Sparks-Sato published an essay alleging that the first paragraph of Hayward’s novella, Mother Witch, is a word-forword copy of the first paragraph of Her, an unpublished story by late novelist Athena Liu. This allegation compounds long-running suspicions that Hayward also stole The Last Front from Liu, though there remains no conclusive proof this is true. Hayward’s editor, Daniella Woodhouse, has released a brief statement claiming Eden Press is aware of these allegations and is looking into the matter.” My phone rings six times that day—all calls from Brett. I don’t pick up. I will eventually, when I trust myself to hear I’ve been fired without breaking into sobs. For now, I take a kind of perverse pleasure in watching everything fall apart. Over the next week, all of my publishing relationships disintegrate. I’m asked to leave two professional Facebook groups and three Slacks I’ve joined in the past year. My so-called writer friends ghost me without exception, even the ones who professed a few months ago to be on my side against the mob. I have no one to turn to but Eden’s Angels. Oh god, I text. It’s happening again. When no one responds—which is atypical; Jen is addicted to her phone—I follow up a few hours later with, I’m having a really hard time right now, is anyone possibly available to talk? They ignore me for three days. Finally Marnie writes: Hi, Junie. Sorry; have been so busy these last few days. Moving house.
Jen never responds at all. I’m supposed to have my monthly mentee check-in session with Emmy Cho on Friday. On Thursday afternoon, I receive an email from the mentor program coordinator: Hi Juniper, Emmy doesn’t think that continuing with your mentor relationship is a good idea, and has asked us to pass the message on to you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for Emmy and for our program. Bitch. Emmy could have at least mustered the courage to say that to my face. It’s probably ill-advised, but I write back to the program coordinator, Thanks for telling me. Do you know if Emmy has any feedback for my mentorship style, soI can take that into account in the future? What I really want to know is if Emmy’s going around bad-mouthing me. I don’t expect a response, but the reply lands in my email later that night: Emmy simply feels that you have very different perceptions of how the industry works. She also requests that you do not contact her, directly or indirectly, any further. ON FRIDAYI DRAG MYSELF OUT OF BED AND MAKE MYSELF PRESENTABLE for a videoconference with my team at Eden. I finally picked up one of Brett’s calls the night before, after Rory texted me asking if I was alive: Your agent just emailed me. He said you weren’t responding, and he was worried about you. What’s going on? Is everything okay? “Daniella wants to talk to you ASAP,” Brett told me when I called him back. He sounded tired. He didn’t even ask me if the allegations were true. “We’ve scheduled a Zoom meeting for tomorrow at two.” Brett’s on the line with me now. All the Eden people are on the same screen, sitting together around a conference table: Daniella, Jessica, and Emily, and a red-haired man I don’t recognize. No one is smiling. No one waves hello when I join the call. “Hello, June.” Daniella’s voice is cool and low, which is how I know she’s pissed. “I’m here with Jessica and Emily, and Todd Byrne from legal.” “I’m here as well,” says Brett, ineffectually. “Hi, Todd,” I say weakly. No one told meI was getting a lawyer. Todd merely nods at me. I realize then that Todd isn’t here for me, he’s here for them. “Where’s Candice?” I ask, trying to get my bearings through small talk.
“Oh, Candice isn’t here anymore,” says Daniella. “She left a while ago.” “Oh.” I wait, but Daniella doesn’t elaborate. I try not to overthink it. Editorial assistants come and go all the time. They’re underpaid entry-level employees in the most expensive city in the world—ill-treated, overlooked, and overworked with minimal opportunities for advancement. It takes inhuman drive to hack it in publishing. Probably Candice just couldn’t take it. “That’s too bad.” “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” Daniella clears her throat. “June, if there’s anything we need to know, you need to tell us right now.” My nose prickles. To my horror, I realize I’m already close to tears. “I didn’t do it,” I say. “I swear to God. It’s not plagiarized, it’s all my own work, especially Mother Witch—” “Especially?” Todd cuts in. “What does that mean?” “I mean, The Last Front was inspired by conversations with Athena,” I say quickly. “But she’s dead now, obviously, and I didn’t have her to talk to whileI was drafting Mother Witch, so the writing style doesn’t resemble hers as much—” “That’s not what Adele Sparks-Sato is claiming,” says Jessica. She pronounces Adele’s last name like she’s reading some exotic soup ingredient from a grocery list. Sparks Sa-touuu. “It appears that she’s gone public with some rather conclusive proof—” “Adele’s full of shit,” I burst out. “Sorry. No—I mean, I get where she’s coming from; I can see why she’s protective of Athena’s work. And, like, yes, I was inspired by a line that Athena wrote once. I saw—um, she showed me, in her notebook. But the story is completely original—it’s based on my own relationship with my mother, in fact, I mean, like, you can call her, even—” “I don’t think that will be necessary,” says Daniella. “What about The Last Front, then? Is that completely original?” “Guys.” My voice hitches. “Come on. You know me.” “You can tell us,” says Daniella. “We’re on your team. If there was any sort of . . . collaboration, or anything that means you are not the sole author, we need to know. We can still make this work. We could set up a split royalties arrangement with Athena’s estate, perhaps, and then out a press release about the shared authorship where you explain that you felt like you needed to do justice to your friend’s work, and that you did not intend to
deceive anyone. Then perhaps we can set up a foundation in Athena’s name —” She’s talking like she’s certain I’m guilty. “Hold on,” I cut in. “No, look, I swear to God—it’s mine, the project is mine, I wrote out every single word myself.” And that’s true. Completely true. I made The Last Front. Athena’s version was utterly unpublishable. That book exists because of me. “Do you possibly have proof of that?” Todd asks. “Early drafts, perhaps —emails with time stamps that we could verify?” “Well, no, because I’m not in the habit of emailing things to myself.” “Is there any proof that it is plagiarized?” Brett cuts in. “I mean, what, are we assuming Junie is guilty until proven innocent? This is ridiculous. Didn’t you guys just put out a book about criminal justice reform?” “We’re not persecuting Junie,” says Daniella. “We’re just trying to protect her, for the sake of her reputation and Eden’s—” “So are we being sued?” Brett presses. “Has Athena’s estate issued a cease and desist? Or is all this precautionary?” “It’s precautionary,” Todd admits. “As it stands, the copyright issue is quite easily contained. Athena’s next of kin—that would be her mother, Patricia Liu—has expressed no desire to sue for damages, and as long as we take out or rewrite the opening paragraph of Mother Witch, there’s no problem with the bulk of the work . . .” I feel a glimmer of hope. Mrs. Liu’s decision not to sue is news to me— hereI thought I’d be on the hook for thousands of dollars in payments. “So we’re all right, then?” “Well.” Daniella clears her throat. “There remains a problem of perception. We need to be clear on what our story is. That’s what we’re trying to do here: get all the facts straight, so we’re all on the same page. So if June could repeat, for clarity, precisely her account of how she wrote The Last Front and Mother Witch . . .” “The Last Front is entirely my original work, inspired by my conversations with Athena.” My voice keeps steady. I’m still terrified, but I feel like I’m on more solid footing, now that I know I’m not getting dropped by my publisher. They’re trying to help me. I just have to give them the right spin, and we can make this work. “And Mother Witch takes the first paragraph from one of Athena’s unpublished drafts, but otherwise it