Lily Chen

Tania Tay writing under the pseudonym Lily Chen. Tania’s dream has always been to run a café. She loves baking and feeding sweet treats to her family and friends. As well as being an author, she is a professional cake decorator.

Tania has a lifelong obsession with stories and storytelling. As a child she read all night, with a torch under the covers. She wrote stories and plays on her mum’s old typewriter in the school holidays. After studying for a degree in History of Art, her career was in advertising, as a copywriter. One day at a job interview, she was asked if she was a “brave writer” which made her join a short story class at the City Lit, with Leone Ross where she wrote a few weird dark tales. Her writing explores female friendship, and the relationship between mothers and daughters. Occasionally there’s a supernatural twist. Tania’s debut novel The Other Woman was published in 2024. She also ghostwrites children’s books and developed a screenplay with BBC Writersroom. Tania is second generation, British Malaysian Chinese, and lives with her family in East London.