Allison Lau

Hi, I’m Allison Lau. Author, editor, and former PhD behavioral scientist who once tracked monkeys, now writing essays and stories about identity, love, ambition, and reclaiming your own life. I write my newsletter Monkey Girl—plus a serialized romcom. Glad you’re here.

Everyone talks about making it. Almost no one talks about staying kind while you do. Watching someone pull that off changes your sense of the possible.

There’s a kind of leadership that doesn’t posture. It just keeps building—and keeps the door open.

The most useful question I’ve picked up last year: “What would a person who already made this work… do next?” For me, that person is Amy Suto. Her latest book Write for Money & Power comes out Jan 12th and it's a game changer.

I don’t think January is for becoming someone new. I think it’s for remembering who you were before the noise.

My favorite moments from research weren’t the clean ones or the publishable ones. They were the ones that quietly dismantled a bad assumption.

4/ Love Letter to Wanderlust chapter 16 is now live.

3/ Some grief doesn’t come from what happens— but from what’s already happened without you.

1/ He was ready for adventure. She was bracing for loss.

The most devastating line I’ve written lately wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was: “The jungle is gone.” Some losses don’t arrive as events. They arrive as facts.

If intimacy doesn’t move the story forward, it doesn’t belong. But when it does—it’s devastatingly precise. #author #writer #romcom #serializedfiction

A good sex scene isn’t about anatomy. It’s about aftermath. Who’s braver. Who’s quieter. Who can’t go back to pretending. #author #writer #romcom #serializedfiction

I’m not choosing one life. I’m learning how to inhabit the one I already have. 3/3

The tension isn’t between loving my child and loving my work. It’s between presence and self-erasure. 2/

I thought motherhood would quiet my anxious, creative brain. It didn’t. It sharpened it. 1/

Motherhood didn’t erase me. It revealed how much of me I’d been postponing. Turns out becoming someone’s safe place doesn’t require disappearing.

First touch isn’t romantic. It’s instinct. Read Love Letter to Wanderlust now ✈️🐒

Love Letter to Wanderlust is waiting for you--read now for free on 🐒 Monkey Girl.

And it only quiets when someone takes your hand.

There’s a special kind of fear reserved for things that might actually work.