Elaine Lui, CTV eTalk entertainment reporter and the voice behind the blog LaineyGossip, has secured a book deal with Random House Canada to publish a memoir about her relationship with her mother. Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mothers Know Best, What’s a Daughter to Do? will be published in hardcover April 1.

On LaineyGossip, Lui writes often about her mother, who earned the nickname “Tsiahng Gai” or “squawking chicken” while growing up in Hong Kong. In a press release, Lui says, “Most people think I’m exaggerating at first when I talk about my ma…. But then they meet her and they understand. They get it. Right away. Why I call my ma the Chinese Squawking Chicken: she’s Chinese, she squawks like a chicken, she is totally nuts, and I am totally dependent on her.”

LaineyGossip, which started as an email newsletter sent to friends, boasts more than 1.5 million readers internationally. She is also the co-host of CTV’s daytime talk show The Social and, last year, delivered a TEDx talk in Vancouver about the critical place of gossip within pop culture.

Deirdre Molina, senior managing editor for the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group, negotiated the deal for Canadian rights with Lui’s agent, Amy Moore-Benson of AMB Literary Management.

In a press release, Molina says, “As a long-time reader and fan of Elaine’s writing on the LaineyGossip blog, I am thrilled to have Elaine expand her sharp wit and storytelling in book form, and deepen the story of her relationship with her beloved and complicated mother, the Chinese Squawking Chicken. This is the first of what I hope to be many books from a great Canadian voice, thinker, and writer.”