by Barbara Baird – Monday, March 9, 2020, published at “America’s 1st Freedom”
Photos of the English and Chinese versions of the book, courtesy of Vera Koo
No doubt, if you follow competition shooting, you’ll recognize the name Vera Koo. An eight-time winner of the NRA National Action Pistol Championship, aka Bianchi Cup, she spent more than 20 years in the world of competition shooting and quickly rose to one of its top female competitors. After retiring last year, Vera refused to slip away into her comfortable life in the Bay area of California. Instead, she embarked on a mission to promote her memoir, The Most Unlikely Champion, published by Balboa Press in 2017, in China.
This is a daunting task, with major hurdles and obstacles along the way. We checked in with Vera recently and asked her about how progress is going with the China book deal. Here’s what she had to say.
A1F: What’s the back story of your memoir and its journey into China?
Vera Koo: Last year was supposed to be the year that my book came out in print at the 2019 Shanghai Book Fair. There was a last-minute hitch; my book did not come out in time to be delivered to the book fair. My husband, Carlos, and I went to Shanghai, nonetheless, to visit the Shanghai Book Fair. I wanted to go see the place that I was supposed to give a half-hour talk at the publisher’s exhibition booth. (I benefited greatly from our visit to the Shanghai Book Fair in 2019, as now I know what outfit I should wear when I go to make the speech in 2020.) The talk I was asked to do had to be accompanied by a 20-minute video that my publisher asked me to make. I was asked to speak in Chinese only. I came to United States when I was 12 years of age. I have to practice a great deal in order that I don’t use one word of English. So my trip to Shanghai was a warmup. I am expected to be asked to do at this year’s China book fair, in August.
Read the full article at “America’s 1st Freedom.”
EN 
ZH_TW 
ZH_CN