Press and Media
For interviews, features, reviews, and media inquiries
Title:Inspiration from 9,000 Miles Away
Author: Meena Cheng
Publishing: October 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9951210-0-8
Format: Paperback
Pages: 266
Price: $19.95
Publisher: Impact 9000 LLC
Categories: Memoir · Culinary nonfiction · Asian American
Book Facts
About the Book
Inspiration can travel in improbable ways. For Meena Cheng, it arrived at 5 a.m. one winter morning from 9,000 miles away — a voice she had never heard, singing in a language she had left behind fifty years earlier.
Inspiration from 9,000 Miles Away is a hybrid of literary memoir and culinary narrative, and one of very few books to bring Macanese cuisine to a general readership. Born in Macau of Portuguese ships and Chinese kitchens, and often called the world's first fusion food, Macanese cooking today risks fading — there are few enough cooks left that the tradition is genuinely at stake. Cheng spent three weeks in Macau researching what remains.
The book moves through twelve dishes and the twelve lessons they carry, alongside a singer's fourteen-year journey toward a life-changing competition. Twelve recipes are included — among them Minchi, Caldo Verde, and Serradura.
It is a story about the timing of inspiration, the wisdom held in ordinary family dishes, and what opens up when we say yes to a spark we did not see coming.
Praises
“A deeply personal memoir and cookbook that ably shows that ‘dreams do not expire. They simply rest.’” — Kirkus Reviews
“An exuberant, perceptive memoir about culinary and cultural complexities.” — Foreword Reviews
“Tender culinary memoir… generous and heartfelt.” — BookLife Reviews
Featured in Kirkus Reviews magazine (July 15, 2026) — a spotlight reserved for a limited number of Indie books.
Author Bio
Meena Cheng is a writer, entrepreneur, and immigrant. Born in Hong Kong, she came to the United States more than fifty years ago and has spent three decades in the investment field, founding Impact Financial in 2014.
Her first book, Fortune in Your Cookies: Finding Financial Wisdom in Everyday Cooking, was named one of BookBrowse's Top Ten Nonfiction Debuts of 2002. Inspiration from 9,000 Miles Away is her return to the page twenty-three years later — the same method turned from money to meaning.
She is the founder of Five Most Splendid Years™, donates 100% of her author royalties to children's literacy programs, and divides her time between New York and Las Vegas.
Short, medium, and full bios available for download below.
Key Themes
A quick overview of the themes, ideas, and conversations explored in Meena’s memoir.
The improbable gift of inspiration
A 5 a.m. spark from 9,000 miles away that woke a dream after twenty-three years — and why inspiration seems to arrive at the moment we are ready for it.
Creative silence and creative return
Twenty-three years away from writing, what that silence taught, and the courage required to step back into a calling.
The immigrant experience
How straddling two worlds shapes identity, belonging, and adaptability — including the Chinese term gwaipo, for a woman who has embraced the West so fully she risks losing touch with home.
Macanese cuisine at risk
An endangered tradition, often called the world's first fusion food, and what it holds about culture, history, and survival.
Twelve dishes, twelve truths
Food as philosophy, each dish revealing something about how we adapt and begin again.
Parallel journeys
How a cuisine and a singer's fourteen-year pursuit express the same perseverance from different directions.
Food as a language of love
Meals as story and legacy — most vividly the fifty-course dinner Cheng created for her brother's fiftieth birthday, one dish for each kilometer of a marathon.
Paying the gift forward
Why 100% of author royalties go to children's literacy programs.
Interview Questions
Conversation-ready questions for interviews, podcasts, and features.
What did it feel like when inspiration found you again after twenty-three years of silence?
How did that early-morning moment land, and what did it wake?
What did those decades of creative silence teach you?
What doubts surfaced when you began again?
How did a singer's fourteen-year pursuit become a mirror for your own return?
What did you recognize in his perseverance?
How has food become a teacher and a philosophy for you?
What did the twelve dishes turn out to be teaching?
Why does Macanese cuisine hold such significance in the book?
What did three weeks in Macau show you about a tradition at risk?
Tell us about the fifty-course dinner you made for your brother.
What did it teach you about family and memory?
How has being an immigrant shaped your understanding of identity and belonging?
What did you bring with you, and what did you only discover later?
Your first book found financial wisdom in cooking. This one finds something else.
What changed in twenty-three years, and what didn't?
What does "becoming — and becoming again" mean to you now?
How did that understanding shift while you wrote?
Why donate all author royalties to children's literacy?
How does that connect to the spark that brought you back?
What do you most hope readers carry with them?
What should remain after the last page?
Pay It Forward
All author royalties go to children's literacy programs. It seems right that the gift that brought me back to words should help put words into the hands of children who need them.
Press Kit
Press Kit (PDF)
Bios, book description, themes, interview questions, author photos, and contact details in one document.
Book Cover (High-resolution)
Front cover image of Inspiration from 9,000 Miles Away.
Author Photo (High-resolution)
For features and event programs.
Author Bios (PDF)
Short, medium, and full versions.
Book Description Sheet (PDF)
One‑page summary of media, bookstores, and festival programming.
Press Contact
For interviews, features, reviews, event invitations, media inquiries, and Pay It Forward partnerships.
Email: inspiration9000miles@gmail.com
Based in: New York & Las Vegas
Website: inspiration9000miles.com