Category: Literature

SKULL WATER is the story of Insu, the son of a Korean mother and a GI father in the U.S. Army, and the intertwined tale of his Korean Big Uncle

“The novel in your hands is something I never knew I’d see, born from things at least two governments hoped to hide. A mixed German Korean boy in 1970s Korea undertakes a quest to save the living with what the dead might know, and he tells us stories across time of this almost-vanished world, and the lives of those thrown away by Korean society and American military forces—his family. Precious, life-altering, rebellious, funny, and full of a necessary truth.” — Alexander Chee

Twenty-five years in the making, Heinz Insu Fenkl‘s ambitious, darkly funny, sweeping novel SKULL WATER is a haunting inter-generational coming-of-age story that grapples with identity and displacement in South Korea in the 1950s and 1970s, and reveals a history both countries would prefer to conceal. Born in South Korea to a German father and a Korean mother, Fenkl grew up in Korea, Germany, and the U.S., and his own experience informs this deeply autobiographical novel.

SKULL WATER is the story of Insu, the son of a Korean mother and a GI father in the U.S. Army, and the intertwined tale of his Korean Big Uncle, who has been exiled to a mountain cave near the family village to die from a gangrenous foot. Growing up near the army base in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu and his two best friends, also “half and halfs,” spend their days skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When Insu hears an old legend that water collected from a dead person’s skull will cure any sickness, he vows to collect some to heal Big Uncle’s mysterious injury. His quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling journey into some of South Korea’s darkest corners. Meanwhile, Big Uncle, a geomancer uprooted by the Korean War, has embraced his solitude and fate and attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see or think we know.

In his interview with The New Yorker, Fenkl said; “It’s a Korean folk belief that stories are meant to be told, and that if one keeps them to oneself and hoards them, there will be terrible consequences.”

Join us for a conversation with Heinz Insu Fenkl about his latest book.

 

Heinz Insu Fenkl
Skull Water

Tuesday, February 7, 2023 | 6:30 PM (EST)

 

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Author:

Born in South Korea to a German father and a Korean mother, Heinz Insu Fenkl grew up in Korea until he was twelve, and then in Germany and the U.S. A professor of English at SUNY New Paltz, he teaches creative writing, Asian and Asian American literature, and film. He’s the author of the novel Memories of My Ghost Brother, a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. He is also known internationally for his collection of Korean folktales and translations of classic Buddhist texts. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and daughter. heinzinsufenkl.com

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How do our stories transform as they are passed down to each generation? Prize-winning poet Su Cho explores the legacies of language and lore in her unforgettable debut collection, The Symmetry of Fish. Selected by Space Struck author Paige Lewis for the National Poetry Series, these poems trace the narratives and phrases of a Korean American immigrant family with absorbing tenderness and curiosity. Cho threads stories of food and folktales through her meditations on joy, grief, friendship, faith, and coming of age in the middle of nowhere. This inventive debut illuminates how language is not lost over generations but distilled into potency— continuously remade, hitched to new associations, and capable of blooming anew. 

In this conversation, Su Cho discusses her debut collection and the emerging tradition of Korean-American poetry.

Su Cho’s The Symmetry of Fish casts such corpuscles of light to the Korean and Korean American imagination. Cho’s poems invoke the tongue’s memory to give language to the unnamable: 가시, 밤, 쌀, 살, 사랑니, 봉숭아. Lightness and stillness expand with each word—and from every malady emerges a cure. —E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love

 

A Conversation with Su Cho

Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6 PM (EDT)

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Su Cho is a poet and essayist born in South Korea and raised in Indiana. She has an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University and a PhD from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has served as the editor-in-chief of Indiana Review, Cream City Review and has served as guest editor for Poetry magazine. Her work has been featured in Poetry, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and Orion; the 2021 Best American Poetry and Best New Poets anthologies; and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Poetry Fellowship, recipient of a National Society of Arts and Letters Award, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is currently an assistant professor at Clemson University.

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“Lee Geum-yi has a gift for taking little-known embers of history and transforming them into moving, compelling, and uplifting stories. I loved Willow from the first page to the last. Loved her courage, and her tenacious, yet caring, beautiful soul. The Picture Bride is the ultimate story of the power of friendship—a must read!” — Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Three Sisters

While reading a book on Korean-American immigration history, Lee Geum-yi stumbled across a photo of three picture brides – young women who left their homes in Korea to marry men whom they knew nothing about. Of the three, only one had a name listed, and there was no information about them. With no record of their lives before or after the photograph, she was seized by an inconsolable desire to bring these women—stuck permanently in a black-and-white photo—back to life. From this desire, Lee Geum-yi’s The Picture Bride was born.

Set in 1918, The Picture Bride follows the journeys of three young women: Willow, who comes from a family of Korean independence activists; Hongju, whose husband died two months into marriage; and Songhwa, who was ridiculed by the children in her village, just for being a shaman’s granddaughter. Unfortunately, the social standing of these three women, who left their country and families with dreams of a new world, doesn’t change much in Hawaii. Yet, through the power of friendship and found family, they forge ahead, creating a new kind of American dream.

The Picture Bride is a celebration of immigrant visionaries, adventurers and trailblazers; a beautiful tale of the power or selfless love; and a thought-provoking story that invites important conversations on colonialism and cultural identity. Perhaps put best by Lee Geum-yi, who hopes this story will find resonance with readers today:

Stories of these three immigrant women, I believe, will deeply resonate with American readers today. … I sincerely hope that all of those who find The Picture Bride will find a piece of their own story in this book.

In this episode of Author Talks, Lee Geum-yi discusses her career in Korea and her English debut.

Author Talks: Lee Geum-yi

Tuesday, October 4, 2022 | 5 PM (EDT)

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Lee Geum-yi was born in 1962, in her grandmother’s house in a small, mountainous village in Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. She became enthralled with the charms of storytelling early on, having spent her childhood under the influence of her grandmother’s bedtime stories. Since then, Lee has published over fifty books in South Korea, and her work has been translated around the world. Beloved by readers and literary critics alike, many of her books have been adapted into TV series, musicals, and webtoons. Lee Geum-yi lives in Seoul, South Korea, with her husband, son, and her old rescue dog, Lulu. The Picture Bride is her first novel to be translated into English.

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Author Photo: Benjo Arwas

As one of the first Korean American actors to blaze a unique path through cultural and business barriers into the mainstream, John Cho’s esteemed career has spanned over two decades with compelling performances across film and television. Cho is also a former 7th-grade English teacher who grew up as a Korean immigrant kid in Texas and East L.A. (among many other places). This spring, he became an instant New York Times bestselling author when he published Troublemaker, an incredible middle grade novel highlighting the unique Korean American perspective as 12-year-old Jordan navigates the evening of the 1992 LA Riots.

In this conversation with The Korea Society, Cho discusses his debut novel and career.

“The novel weaves together large-scale issues of social injustice and interracial barriers with the intimate pain— and joy—of personal relationships. Equal parts suspenseful and emotionally insightful.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A gripping work of historical fiction. . . Exploring a significant historical event, the authors create an accessible yet emotionally complex read.” – Publishers Weekly

 

JOHN CHO

Tuesday, July 19, 2022 | 5 PM (EDT)

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

A New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick • A Most Anticipated Read in LitHub, CrimeReads, Thrillist, and Popsugar

The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career—The Old Woman with the Knife is an international bestseller and the English language debut from an award-winning South Korean author Gu Byeong-mo.

At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age—that she’ll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.

Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses—for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she knows about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw’s world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.

A sensation in South Korea, and now translated into English for the first time by Chi-Young Kim, The Old Woman with the Knife is an electrifying, singular, mordantly funny novel about the expectations imposed on aging bodies and the dramatic ways in which one woman chooses to reclaim her agency.

In this episode of Author Talks,Gu Byeong-mo discusses her career in Korea and her English debut.

“A resonant K-noir treat.”—Luke Jennings, author of the Killing Eve series

“Darkly funny, this South Korean novel examines the universal challenge of aging while maintaining societal relevance.”—The Washington Post

“Skillfully rendered…a thriller with heart.”—Kirkus Reviews

 

Author Talks: Gu Byeong-mo

Tuesday, June 14, 2022 | 5 PM

 

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Gu Byeong-mo is the bestselling author of nine novels and three short story collections. She has won many literary prizes in Korea, including the prestigious Today’s Writer Award in 2015, and her novels have been translated into several languages, including Spanish and French. Born in Seoul, she now resides with her family in Jinju.

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 Author photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz

“The Evening Hero is at once a hilarious, lacerating look at the American for-profit healthcare system and a profoundly moving examination of the long-term effects of war, trauma, and displacement on individuals, families, and cultures. I will never forget Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s evening hero, Dr. Yungman Kwak.” —Ann Packer, New York Times bestselling author of The Children’s Crusade

Chances are, you’ve read something you loved by the talented and prolific Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Her stories, criticism, and essays on everything from Picnicking in North Korea to navigating her son’s disability have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Paris Review, and The Guardian, among others. She’s the author of the acclaimed novel Somebody’s Daughter and the YA classic, Finding My Voice. A sharp observer, a masterful storyteller, and an extraordinary and bitingly funny stylist, Lee uses those talents here to reveal the world we live in and imagine the world we could live in, too, in her latest novel The Evening Hero.

In The Evening Hero Lee wrestles with big questions and big themes: how war trauma insinuates itself between the generation of immigrants and their American-born children; the dire state of medical care in the US—from rural hospital closures to crazy, high-end shopping mall medicine; and what it means to be a good Korean, a good American, a good human. And she shows us that it’s never too late to become a hero.

In a conversation with Frances Cha, Lee talks about her illustrious career and her latest novel.

“A profound meditation on what happens to those of us who come to this country from elsewhere, what we gain and what we lose. Yungman is an indelible hero. Lee is a magnificent writer” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

The Evening Hero will be available for sale during the event.

 

Marie Myung-Ok Lee with Frances Cha

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 | 6:30 PM (EDT)

 

Presented in partnership with Asian American Writers’ Workshop

 

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Author:

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an acclaimed Korean American writer and author of the young adult novel Finding My Voice, thought to be the first contemporary-set Asian American YA novel. She is one of a handful of American journalists who have been granted a visa to North Korea since the Korean War. She was the first Fulbright Scholar to Korea in creative writing and has received many honors for her work, including an O. Henry honorable mention, the Best Book Award from the Friends of American Writers, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fiction fellowship. Marie is a founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at Columbia. She lives in New York City with her family.

 

About the Moderator:

Frances Cha is the author of the novel If I Had Your Face (Ballantine, 2020), which was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Time Magazine, NPR and BBC among other publications, and is being translated into 11 languages. She is from Korea and worked as a culture editor for CNN in Seoul and Hong Kong. She has taught creative writing at Yonsei University and media studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and currently teaches undergraduate fiction workshop at Columbia University. Her children’s book The Goblin Twins, set in Korea and New York, is forthcoming from Crown in 2023.

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