Our Families, Our Secrets: New Literature by Korean American Writers
Angie Kim, Steph Cha, & Catherine Chung
Our Families, Our Secrets: New Literature by Korean American Writers

Every family has secrets—secrets they keep from each other, as well as the ones they keep together. The bonds and scars of family are universal, but they manifest in different ways in every country, as well as in every community and every household. A reading & discussion, authors Steph Cha, Catherine Chung, and Angie Kim will explore issues of immigration, history, legacy, and identity in new novels about American families and the secrets they keep.

Miracle Creek (FSG, 2019) is Angie Kim’s powerhouse debut: a literary courtroom thriller about an immigrant family and a young single mother accused of killing her autistic son. Kim takes a classic form– courtroom drama– and draws on her own experience as an immigrant & lawyer to examine how far we’ll go to protect our families & our deepest secrets. Alexander Chee says of the novel, “A bright seam of crisis, mystery, and love emerges in these pages. Angie Kim has written a bold debut novel about science and immigration and the hopes and fears each engenders.”

Catherine Chung’s exhilarating sophomore effort, The Tenth Muse (Ecco, 2019), has been praised from writers like Roxane Gay, Elif Batuman, J. Courtney Sullivan, Téa Obreht, Rebecca Makkai, and Helen Oyeyemi, and has received rave reviews from The Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, and Kirkus Reviews, among others. A saga about a trailblazing mathematician and her extraordinary family story, Catherine Chung – who has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago and spent time at Einstein’s famed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton – brings to life the language and passion of mathematics and shines a light on the fascinating but too often overlooked real life historical contributions of women in science.

Your House Will Pay (Ecco, 2019) is Steph Cha’s latest novel, tackling head-on the major themes of racial tension, police violence, social movements, and cultural identity, from the perspective of a Los Angelean. Your House Will Pay (Ecco, 2019) marks a bold new direction for Steph Cha, further establishing her as one of the strongest voices in the next generation of both crime and literary writers – compelled by the notion that crime is a fundamental part of life and exploring what that means for the individual as well as society at large.

RSVP HERE! $5 Suggested Donation.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds. All donations go to AAWW public programs. The Asian American Workshop is a national nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.

Catherine Chung was a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a Granta New Voice, and a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from The University of Chicago and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before receiving her MFA from Cornell University. She has published work in The New York Times and Granta and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She lives in New York City. For more information, please visit: www.catherinechung.com

Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds.

Angie Kim is the author of the national bestseller Miracle Creek, named a “Best Book of the Year” by Time and Amazon, a Washington Post Bestseller and Summer Read pick, and a Top 10 Apple Books Debut of the Year. Kim is one of Variety Magazine’s “10 Storytellers to Watch,” and has written for Vogue, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Glamour, Salon, and Slate. She moved from Seoul, Korea, to Baltimore as a preteen, and attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. A former trial lawyer, she now lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three sons, and is at work on her next novel. Learn more at www.angiekimbooks.com.

This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page.

NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY
* The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor.
* We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free.
If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating.

Our Families, Our Secrets: New Literature by Korean American Writers

Angie Kim, Steph Cha, & Catherine Chung
Monday, November 4, 2019
7:00 PM
$0.00
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
112 W. 27th Street, 6th Floor
New York NY 10001
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