Co-founder & CEO
Grace Zimmerman
Grace leads Yearn from the reader experience outward. She believes discovering a new favorite book should feel personal, specific, and a little bit magical — never like searching an endless digital shelf.
The people behind Yearn
We are building the home romantasy deserves — with equal parts reader instinct, technical craft, and belief in the people who make stories possible.
Meet the founders
Two perspectives, one shared obsession
Grace and Honey founded Yearn to make discovering, reading, and listening to romantasy feel as thoughtful as the stories themselves.
Co-founder & CTO
Honey Chawla
Honey turns that vision into the technology behind Yearn. She builds the systems that make reading and listening feel effortless, so the product disappears and the story can take over.
From Grace & Honey
A letter fromthe founders
To everyone who has ever wanted to live inside a story.
Romantasy has never been a niche feeling. It is the kind of reading that takes over group chats, fills shelves, and makes strangers become friends over one impossible choice between two fictional characters.
Yet finding the right story still asks readers to search through platforms that were never built around how this community actually reads. Authors, meanwhile, deserve more ways to reach the people already waiting to love their work.
We started Yearn because we believed both sides deserved a home designed with intention: discovery in the language readers use, stories from verified authors, and a model that values the people behind every book.
We are still at the beginning, and we are building it alongside the readers, authors, advisors, and partners who believe this genre deserves a world of its own.
Yours in magic and kissing,
Grace & Honey
Advisory board
Experience that helps us turn the page
Our advisors bring perspective from across publishing, entertainment, technology, growth, and global media.
Media Entrepreneur, Producer & Creator
Sharad Devarajan
Sharad Devarajan is a media entrepreneur, producer, and creator. A pioneer in global entertainment, he collaborated with Marvel to create Spider-Man: India, co-created Chakra the Invincible with Stan Lee, co-founded Virgin Comics with Sir Richard Branson, and serves as co-creator and showrunner of The Legend of Hanuman, one of India’s most successful animated series. He is currently Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Toonsutra, India’s leading webtoon platform. Sharad has served for over 15 years as a Professor at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, where he teaches numerous classes on artificial intelligence, media and entrepreneurship.
Founder & CEO, Red Sage Studios
James Farrell
James Farrell is the Founder and CEO of Red Sage Studios, a production company focused on adapting premium YA stories with passionate, built-in audiences for film. Previously, he served as Head of International Originals at Amazon MGM Studios, overseeing teams across 17 global markets and more than 150 films and series annually, including breakout hits Culpa Mía, Maxton Hall, and Clarkson’s Farm. Red Sage’s initial slate includes a live-action adaptation of Danielle L. Jensen’s The Bridge Kingdom, the first installment in her six-book, New York Times bestselling romantasy series, as well as She’s With Me, based on Jessica Cunsolo’s hit Wattpad series, which is being developed for film in collaboration with Webtoon Productions.
Media & Technology Executive
Katie Soo
Katie Soo is an award-winning media and technology executive who has built and scaled some of the world’s leading entertainment and consumer brands. She previously served as SVP of Growth Marketing at HBO Max, where she led subscriber growth and marketing across major franchises including Game of Thrones and Wonder Woman, and has held executive roles at Warner Bros., DC Universe, Hulu, KiwiCo, Dice, and Dollar Shave Club. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Samba TV and advises technology and entertainment companies. She has been recognized among Ad Age’s 40 Under 40, Business Insider’s CMOs to Watch, and Gold House’s A100.
Publishing & Media Advisor
Kuo-Yu “Ku” Liang
Kuo-Yu “Ku” Liang is a publishing industry veteran who has spent more than three decades at the forefront of books, traditional publishing, licensing, and global distribution. At Random House, he rose to Associate Publisher of Del Rey, helping grow the imprint’s sales from $20 million to $50 million and working with bestselling authors including Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, Philip Pullman, R.A. Salvatore, and J.R.R. Tolkien, before founding Diamond Book Distributors and helping bring graphic novels and manga into mainstream bookstores. Today, he leads Ku Worldwide, advising publishers and media companies on M&A, international expansion, licensing, and the evolving ways readers discover and consume stories.