Seven

Summary

• The protagonist, June, achieves the major milestone of making the New York Times Bestseller list at number three, indicating a strong sales performance for her book "The Last Front".
• She reflects on Athena, a deceased colleague and adversary, as the one person who would have genuinely understood the implications of reaching this landmark.
• Despite her success, June struggles with who to share her joy with due to various personal and professional issues.
• The protagonist's novel continues to perform well, holding steady for weeks on the best-seller list. This leads to invites to speak at various literary events, which she starts to enjoy after she achieves a higher level of acclaim.
• At these literary events, June goes from being snubbed to being sought after, revealing a change in attitude towards her from her peers following her success.
• June moves up the social ladder, upgrading her lifestyle and clearing personal debts. She also gives back to her community and mentors a younger writer named Emmy Cho.
• Emmy's question about June's ethnicity - or lack thereof - raises questions about whether June will be an effective mentor because she is not Asian, like Emmy. This visibly irks June and foregrounds inherent prejudices and stereotypes within the literary world.