Born and raised in Singapore, Kyla Zhao graduated in 2021 from Stanford University with an MA in Communications (Media Studies) and BA in Psychology. Right now, she works in marketing at a tech company in Silicon Valley, California. Kyla was a recent guest on Harbour for the Arts Podcast!
Kyla wrote The Fraud Squad in the midst of the global pandemic. Instead of writing about fear, doom, and gloom in her debut book, she created these wonderful, fun, substantive characters and a plot line that keeps you hanging on for more. In many instances, Kyla shares the Singapore culture and aesthetic with her readers through the characters, because she was feeling homesick and could not leave the United States to be with her family during the pandemic. The book also has a reader's guide in the back, something that a lot of authors today take for granted and don't include. I love learning about an author's original intention for a character, and storyline.
Besides novel writing, Kyla has an extensive magazine editorial portfolio. Previously, she was a fashion and lifestyle writer at Vogue Singapore. She has also written for the Singapore editions of Harper's Bazaar and Tatler covered the Asian Television Awards, and interviewed personalities such as singer Nathan Sykes. Above all else, Kyla hopes to champion Asian representation in her works and write the characters of color that she rarely got to read about when she was young.
Kyla Zhao had her first women's magazine byline at the age of sixteen, writing about weddings for Harper's Bazaar Singapore before she even had her first kiss. Since then, she has also written for the Singapore editions of Vogue and Tatler. A native Singaporean, Kyla now works in Silicon Valley after graduating from Stanford University in 2021. She's still trying to understand why Californians adore hiking and Patagonia fleeces so much.
The Fraud Squad by Kyla Zhao
For as long as she can remember, Samantha Song has dreamed of writing for a high-society magazine-and she'd do anything to get there. But the constant struggle to help her mom make ends meet and her low social status cause her dream to feel like a distant fantasy.
Now Samantha finds herself working at a drab PR firm. Living vicariously through her wealthy coworker and friend, Anya Chen is the closest she'll get to her ideal life. Until she meets Timothy Kingston: the disillusioned son of one of Singapore's elite families-and Samantha's one chance at infiltrating the high-society world to which she desperately wants to belong.
To Samantha's surprise, Timothy and Anya both agree to help her make a name for herself on Singapore's socialite scene. But the borrowed designer clothes and plus-ones to every glamorous event can only get her so far. The rest is on Samantha, and she's determined to impress the editor-in-chief of Singapore's poshest magazine. But the deeper Samantha wades into this fraud, the more she fears being exposed-especially with a mysterious gossip columnist on the prowl for dirt-forcing her to reconcile her pretense with who she really is before she loses it all.
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