Lui Sit returns to the literary fray with a debut children's novel
The author’s debut children’s novel, Land of the Last Wildcat, is a breathtaking action adventure series with important representation of mixed-race heritage.
Lui Sit is one of two East and Southeast Asian authors to be shortlisted for the 2025 Children’s Wainwright Prize for Fiction. Sit made the shortlist for her debut middle-grade novel, Land of the Last Wildcat, while Kengo Kurimoto was shortlisted for his graphic novel, Wildful.
“I never intended to write about nature,” Sit says when I ask her how she feels about the shortlist. “I was writing what I felt was right for the story.”
Sit was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Perth, aged three, with her parents. The Sit family arrived in Australia not long after the renunciation by the Whitlam Labor government in 1973 of the White Australia policy – a 1901 policy that excluded non-Europeans from immigrating to Australia. She grew up in a predominantly white Australian neighbourhood, speaking Cantonese at home. Like many Chinese immigrant children, Sit learned English at school.
“My parents put me in a school that was mostly attended by white kids because they wanted me to integrate,” says Sit of her theatre nurse father and part-time working mother.
“This was both good and bad. I knew from an early age that I was different to the rest of my classmates. Good because I had an Australian education. Today, I identify [as] Chinese, Australian and Briton, having now lived in the UK for nearly two decades.”
One of the themes that her debut explores is that of being a latchkey child with an absent parent and the freedom to run wild. This liberty to explore nature continues in the sequel. Though Sit was brought up by both parents, she was left pretty much to her own devices, like many children of immigrant parents, who worked long hours to put food on the table.
This freedom enabled Sit to explore the Australian bushland, which helped develop her interest and passion for the natural world. Sit has been an environmental fundraising coordinator and a campaigner against tree-logging before she started writing for children. It’s no surprise that her activism and love for the natural world would seep into her stories.
As an avid reader, it was stories filled with adventure, possibilities and make-believe that resonated with her. As a writer, Sit put children’s literature first when it came to writing her first book. She set her stories in the contemporary world because this was what interested her most. Land of the Last Wildcat was her first attempt at writing for children and she kept at it even though there have been many times when she wanted to give it away – to give up – as they say in Australia.
“Each time I wanted to give up, something would happen that kept me on the [writing] path… I was accepted into writing development schemes, offered mentorships or won prizes…,” she says, wistfully.
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Following these fortuitous signs, Sit plodded on. In 2022, she won the FAB Prize for fiction and also a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators scholarship which was sponsored by literary agent Becky Bagnell. Bagnell offered representation along with three other agents after they had read Sit’s submission. Sit chose Bagnell and within months Bagnell sold the manuscript to Macmillan Children’s Books.
So far, Sit’s author journey has been a positive one. Author care at Macmillan made her feel welcomed and included, and this gave her the impetus to carry on writing. Additionally, a growing ESEA writing community gave her a creative home and this encouraged her to continue creating.
Yet, Sit felt that focusing on her ethnicity was not the right way to move forward in her writing. She wanted to be “judged” on her own merits, she tells me. “The story must sell.” Not her immigrant story or that she is Chinese, the story itself, she repeats, must sell. Before continuing, Sit pauses and reflects. “If I had focused on my ethnicity, perhaps my book might have been picked up earlier,” she confesses. “But I wanted to stay true to myself. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed… Besides, all that stuff is in my memoir – a work in progress.”
It is important to Sit that she writes stories that are incidentally inclusive of her ESEA identity, of her experience as a mother of a biracial child (her husband is of South Asian heritage), and not stories that merely ticked diversity boxes. It is imperative to her that she is accepted on the same playing field and not because she focused wholly on her heritage and ethnicity, though she has been asked to do this.
It was not until writing The Lucky House Detective Agency for Storymix (as Scarlett Li) that she leaned into her background and culture because the story required it. Writing this middle grade liberated Sit to find a way to include elements of her ethnicity and cultural heritage in a voice that felt authentic to her. And leaning into this voice, she incorporated elements of who she is when writing Land of the Last Wildcat. This book is Sit in her element – Land of the Last Wildcat is a breathtaking action adventure series with important representation of mixed-race heritage, featuring environmental messaging and an adorable wildcat. The sequel, The Wildcat and the Gathering Storm, illustrated by David Dean, will be published on 10th September 2026.
Sit’s books are important. They fill the gap in homegrown talent in the UK, identified by the Inclusive Books for Children Excluded Voices report, for Own Voices ESEA children’s books: “[The] reviewers frequently encountered books by African-American creators based in the US, as well as ESEA creators born and working in East and Southeast Asia or the US.”
Now that she has been accepted on a level playing field and her debut has been judged by its own merit, Sit says she no longer feels impeded by having to mine her heritage and ethnicity.
“Now I know I don’t have to ‘Chinese’ it,” she says. “Now I know that I can write on my own terms and I’ve found my voice that lets me do it, setting me free to write my next book.”
Sit is working on her next contemporary kids book that is inspired by her ethnic Chinese identity and Australian childhood.
Metadata
Imprint Macmillan Children’s Books
Publication 1st May 2025
Format/s PB (9781035040315, £7.99), EB (9781035040322 £7.99)
Editor Emma Jones
Agent Becky Bagnell, Lindsay Literary Agency
