Cecile Pin (born 1996) is a French author based in London. She is known for her debut novel Wandering Souls (2023).
Early life
Pin was born and raised in Paris,[1] to a French father and a Vietnamese mother who had arrived in the 1970s from a camp in Thailand.[2] She also spent four years of her childhood in New York, where she attended a French School.[3] At age 18, Pin moved to London to study Philosophy at University College London (UCL). She completed a Master of Arts (MA) at King's College London.[4]
Career
Pin previously worked as an editorial assistant at Jonathan Cape.[5]
Via HarperCollins imprint Fourth Estate and with help from the 2021 London Writers' Award, Pin's debut novel Wandering Souls was published in March 2023.[6] Its U.S. publisher was Henry Holt.[7] Pin had become inspired researching the Vietnamese boat people, especially Vietnamese refugees to Britain.[8][9] She felt the British Southeast Asian community was underrepresented in literature. Her philosophy studies also had an influence on the novel.[10]Wandering Souls was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize[11] and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.[12] The French translation by Carine Chichereau[13] also received a Fragonard Prize for Foreign Literature.[14]
In January 2024, Fourth Estate acquired the rights to Pin's second novel Celestial Light.[15]