Bob Asmussen | UI grad making name for herself with books, magazine pieces

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Erika Hayasaki's career origin story can be traced to her time at Champaign's Jefferson Middle School.

"I started writing for the school paper at Jefferson and became interested then," Hayasaki said.

Two successful books and countless magazine articles later, it's fair to say the

University of Illinois journalism graduate and former News-Gazette reporter made a great choice.

Hayasaki's latest book, "Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity and the Meaning of Family," is about to be released in paperback.

The work received glowing reviews and was named one of National Public Radio's Best Books of 2022.

Hayasaki earned the Nautilus Silver Book Award

this year.

"Somewhere Sisters" details the life of Vietnamese identical twins Isabella and Hà, who were born in 1998. They were separated at a young age, with Hà remaining in a rural Vietnam village and Isabella (named Loan at birth) adopted by a wealthy American family.

Hayasaki had earlier written a story about twins for The Atlantic. A researcher for that piece told her about Hà and Isabella.

"Their story struck a chord, and I wanted to learn more about it," Hayasaki said. "They do eventually reunite. They are very close. But it was a long time coming."

Hayasaki spent years doing research and interviews for the book.

Now 45, Hayasaki lives in southern California with her husband and three children, including a set of twins.

A former Los Angeles Times national correspondent, Hayasaki is a freelance writer while working as an associate professor in the literary journalism program at the University of California, Irvine.

Teaching allows her to share the positive side of journalism.

"Every day is something new," she said. "You're learning. You're talking to people.That way, it's the best job ever. That's what I tell my students. 'If you're a curious person, if you love learning and talking to people and the interview process and the writing process, then there's really no better job.'"

C-U connection

Hayasaki is the daughter of retired NCAA champion UI men's gymnastics coach Yoshi Hayasaki.

"I'm super proud of my dad," she said. "A lot of the lessons that I learned about perseverance and drive come from him as an athlete.

"His life has always been working really hard, training, competing, training others, which I do as a teacher now, and sort of passing on the lessons he's learned with his students and the people he coached."

Best lesson from Dad?

"You win some, you lose some," Erika said. "That's part of being an athlete. And that's also part of being a writer. It's full of rejection. Sometimes, you get a little win here or there. There are all these ups and downs and you just kind of ride it out.

"What he always said was you find a career that you like doing. That's what he did."

Keeping busy

Over the years, Hayasaki has written feature articles for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic, The Verge, MIT Technology Review, Slate, The New Republic, The Guardian, Newsweek, Time, Marie Claire, Glamour, Elle, Foreign Policy and others.

She is currently working on a piece for New York magazine about the tragic wildfires on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

"I was on Maui after the fires for some time doing reporting," Hayasaki said.

She had visited Lahaina a few years ago with her dad to see her brother, who was working there at the time.

"Very devastating what's happened out there," Hayasaki said.

Early years

Hayasaki was born in Champaign and stayed in the community through middle school.

She moved away for high school then returned to the UI for college.

During her college days in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hayasaki wrote obituaries for The News-Gazette and did other reporting.

"I would help out with education with Julie (Wurth) and other things like that," Hayasaki said.

After graduation, Hayasaki was hired into a two-year internship program by the L.A. Times, one of a dozen who started right out of college. It turned into a full-time gig at the paper.

"I was really fortunate, and I learned a lot," Hayasaki said.

She covered education, crime and breaking news. She applied to be a national writer and was moved to New York, which is where she met her husband.

Hayasaki was in charge of covering nine different states, handling breaking news. She wrote about the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University. She went to Alaska to cover vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

"It was fun and exciting," she said. "A lot of hard work and a lot of hard stories."

In 2009, after nine years at the Times, Hayasaki accepted the teaching position and took a buyout from the paper.

"We didn't know what the future of news looked like at newspapers," she said.

Her idea was to write for magazines. It was not an easy transition.

"I realized pretty quickly that it was hard to break into freelancing," Hayasaki said. "People were just completely ignoring my pitches for years.

"I basically had to start over. Nobody in the magazine world knew me or cared to give me an assignment."

Eventually, editors started to reach out to her, and she was able to build relationships that led to more work.

What type of stories does she like to write?

"Nowadays, it's what I'm interested in, and I'm interested in a lot of different things," Hayasaki said.

She has an upcoming story in Elle about twins.

Any more books in the hopper?

"I'm figuring that out right now," she said. "I'm working on some things."