The whole novel is just June admitting only to what she was caught doing, but everything she published she stole from Athena. She stole Athena's final draft of The Last Front, stole Athena's final draft of Mother Witch. She only copped to stealing as much of The Last Front as she thought people would swallow considering her admission, only copped to the first paragraph of Mother Witch since that's all anyone knew about. She even stole most of Yellowface from Athena and thinly adapted it to her circumstances.
Also her real name is George Santos.
Mrs. Liu clearly doesn't want to get whatever's in Athena's private notes to get out. We do find out some of the dark Liu family history—Athena's father committed suicide, and many of her relatives were killed in violent conflicts. But Athena is said to have talked about that in interviews, meaning there's something else, possibly even worse, that she wasn't saying. Geoff also notes that there was "a lot of trauma" in the Liu family; he might know some stuff that Athena wasn't willing to discuss in interviews. Perhaps Athena was abused by a family member, and Mrs. Liu knows, and doesn't want all that to become public, either because it'd blow up what's left of her family, or because she knows Athena wouldn't want anyone else to know about it.
