It took 20 years for this author to reunite with the teacher who changed his life

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/17/ [login to see] /after-20-years-author-jamil-jan-kochai-reunites-with-teacher-susan-lung
Talk about a storybook ending.

Author Jamil Jan Kochai searched for more than a decade for Susan Lung — the second-grade teacher who had changed his life over 20 years earlier. And on Saturday night, in one of those "life is better than fiction" twists, the two were finally reunited at one of his book-reading events.

"I pretty much learned how to read and write in English because of her, and if it wasn't for Mrs. Lung, I don't know what would have happened to me," Kochai, who still finds it difficult to call his former teacher by her first name, told NPR.

"I feel like everything that I've done up to this point — all the success that I've had, the fact that I'm a novelist today — it all started with Mrs. Lung all the way back in 1999, when I was 7 years old," he added.

Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. He is currently promoting his second book, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories. His work has been published and praised in many of the nation's most esteemed publications. But for much of his early life, he could hardly speak English.