Debut author Aja Belle Schiller shares story with Snowmass roots

Author Aja Belle Schiller, 22, recently released her debut short story, “Pigs,” published by Bottlecap Press.

The short, 20-page comedic story stems from Schiller growing up in Snowmass and finding her identity in pockets of the local Roaring Fork Valley community.

Born in China, she came to Roaring Fork Valley to join her adoptive family at 11 months old. She graduated from Aspen High School in 2021. Now, she lives in upstate New York after graduating from Union College in 2025 with a double major in English and psychology.

“Pigs” revolves around a young girl who finds herself and her identity through friendship and shared culture, based on her Chinese-American transracial adoptee experience in the small town of Snowmass.

“It’s really based on my experiences being an Asian-American adoptee in a predominantly white space, which has its pros and its cons,” Schiller said. “But I do think that growing up amongst people who don’t look like you really shapes your own self-perception, for better or for worse. I had that moment of realization: ‘Whoa, I am not like the people who I grew up around, but that doesn’t mean that I’m bad. I’m me. I’m beautiful. I’m okay, and everything’s okay.'”

She added, “It was fun for me to write.” 

Schiller found whimsical turns of phrase, like setting the story in “New Pork State” and sitting beside the “slop trough” specific to pigs, which resonated with her. 

She did note, however, that despite pulling from her life experiences, the story itself is fiction.

“I’m not Lisa, the pig. It’s a pretty general tale,” she said. 

She noted she has seen other people online, typically Asian-American adoptees in white families, share “aha” moments when they noticed they were different, which can spark a self-realization journey to explore a side of themselves they haven’t examined yet.

She also acknowledged it’s natural to want to be like the people around you.

For Schiller, many of her friends growing up were white, her teachers and her dad, with a mom who is half-Japanese,” according to Schiller.

“I hope that if any Chinese-American adoptee out there reads it, and resonates with it, that they know there’s a lot of people going through what they are going through. And there’s a big, big wide community of people out there (who relate),” she said. 

She also has a nonbiological older sister who is adopted from China, as well.

Growing up in Snowmass, Schiller remembered doing her middle school internship at The Aspen Times. 

“I would go on beloved trips to the old offices,” she said.

Later, she joined the Aspen High School journalism program in her freshman year. The Skier Scribbler started out with a very small team of six to eight people, but it grew during her tenure there. 

“It was so crazy and chaotic. There were no rules. We had to make all of the stuff from the ground up. Then, by the time I graduated, they needed two different classes because there were so many people involved and such a big production team going on. Journalism in Aspen, in general, has been a key highlight of my young life,” Schiller said. 

She frequently visits her parents in Snowmass when she can. Her parents have always championed her writing.

“They have been supportive of anything I do,” she said. “I can’t imagine living without writing. I would write no matter what.”

For more information, visit bottlecap.press/collections/bottlecap-features/products/pigsabs.