Cat Min: My name is Cat Min, and my full name is Catherine Yu Kung Min. Min Yu Kung is my Korean name. I'm Korean. I was born in Korea. My grandfather had given me that name. The name Catherine, my mom had given me my English name, Catherine, because one of her close friends had wanted to name her daughter Catherine, but she only ended up having sons. So to fulfill her friend's wish, my mom had given me the name, Catherine.

When I was at SVA in 2016 studying illustration, during the summer residency, somehow I was given the nickname Cat. That was just something like a name that people were calling me, and it just sort of stuck, and it's sort of become my real name now, and I think I liked it so much that I decided to use it as my author and illustrator name on my picture books, so now I go by the name Cat. My old friends still call me Catherine or Yu Kung.

I actually love having all these different names, because it tells me what kind of relationship I have with that other person who is calling me by a specific name, and there's so much history, and I love the name Cat, I love the name Catherine, Yu Young, Yuki. There's a lot of nicknames there, too.