Meet the Intern: Ian Tan
Spring 2026 Intern, Ian Tan
My name is Ian Tan, chess, sword and food enthusiast. It’s good to be here, I am honored to be the History Through Fiction intern for this Spring. From boyhood, I have been besotted with stories and their power to transport and immerse. Fairy tales and fables were my first love, followed closely behind by children’s stories like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five (British literature, for any puzzled Americans), Brer Rabbit adaptations, and the Berenstain Bears series, as I grew up.
Then I started reading classics like Gulliver’s Travels, Oliver Twist, Robin Hood, and King Arthur, alongside encyclopedias about things like dinosaurs and the Iron Age and volcanoes, so on. Something clicked. While these stories also spirited me, enveloped me… apparently there were stories behind these stories. The settings hold elements of realism to them; yet such realism, by the 21st century, was… gone from the world. But all this still held so much appeal, and as encyclopedias proved, there are traces left in the modern world. Just like that, I was entranced with history and the multiple layers of stories enmeshed there.
Much later, after discovering the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, I realized that historical fiction (well, historical fantasy, in ASOIAF’s case) exists as a genre. I knew then I wanted to write historical fiction someday, as well as get involved with such literature, somehow.
It was five to six years later in 2021, when I started editing for my first indie publishing firm, Wild Ink Publishing LLC. They publish a range of genres, but somehow I landed three historical fiction authors, one whose book went between World War II and 1996 Scotland, another who covered the mid-14th century in Turin, northwestern Italy, and a third who set his novel along 18th century Natchez Trace.
I count myself fortunate to have worked with each of those authors. Not only were their manuscripts a delight and challenge to explore, but their personalities were so easy to get along with amidst our collaboration. Thanks to them, I built the communication and people skills necessary to guide someone along the process of editing, while also getting a feel for the historical fiction genre in different settings and writing styles.
And then there was Dr. John David Graham, just dearly departed this past January 7th. My first independent client who presented me the life journey of a character that was clearly modeled off his own history of grief, pain, soul-searching, humility and growth. All of this John laid bare in his eventual publication of Running As Fast As I Can, after two years with me. It was frustrating, tiring… and completely affirmative for my insights into what a story demands of writers and historians.
John didn’t have the most refined technique or a consistent grasp of what I taught him, but his characters were raw and honest. He wasn’t embarrassed to make them show profound—sometimes radiant, sometimes ugly—emotion, nor did his story shy away from heavy subjects like sexual harassment, or how the church doesn’t address homelessness.
Even as I bid him goodbye while stepping into this internship, I take that spirit forward with me into my attitude towards historical fiction. History is flecked with adventure and mystery, with both world-shaking drama and tiny, micro events that we so often overlook. And most commonly, it bears the sweet and sour of life, and we honor it by acknowledging both, not one over the other.
About the Intern
Ian Tan is an editor and writer with a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Creative Writing concentration from Messiah University. He has experience as a literary judge for Ink & Insights and as a line and developmental editor with Wild Ink Publishing, where he has worked primarily with fantasy and historical fiction. Ian specializes in vulnerable inner monologue and immersive, sensory-driven prose. He is currently an intern with History Through Fiction and is developing his own fiction alongside his editorial work.