Category: Arts & Culture

Han Kang’s Booker Prize-winning 2016 novel The Vegetarian solidified her place as a master of the surreal, and is a powerful reminder that what makes surrealist narratives so haunting is the way they illuminate concerns that are real and urgent. Han, one of South Korea’s leading literary voices, joins the Pen America’s World Voices Festival for the North American launch of her new novel, Greek Lessons. Following a female protagonist who loses her voice and seeks out learning Greek as a possible remedy, the book is a poignant exploration of language, the nature of pain, and the need to move on. Join Han in conversation with Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies, for this fascinating conversation of the self and the myriad ways we seek to heal.

The Korea Society is proud to be a Cultural Partner for the World Voices Festival.

All PEN World Voices Festival tickets are non-refundable. Please confirm the time and location of your event before finalizing your purchase.

About the Speaker:

Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. A recipient of the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature, she is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, Human Acts, and The White Book.

About the Moderator:

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is the national bestseller Intimacies, which was longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction and was named one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of Summer 2021. Her previous novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. It was named one of the best books of the year by over a dozen publications and translated into sixteen languages, and it is being adapted for film. Her two earlier novels, Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, were both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena Foundation, Kitamura has written for publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB Magazine, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.

A novel about a woman tossed overboard by heartbreak and loss, who has to find her way back to stable shores with the help of a giant Pacific octopus.

Author photo by S. M. Sukardi

One of “22 Works of Fiction to Read This Spring”—The New York Times

A novel about a woman tossed overboard by heartbreak and loss, who has to find her way back to stable shores with the help of a giant Pacific octopus. Sea Change is an “absolutely stunning debut” novel —Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face—by Gina Chung.

Ro is stuck. She’s just entered her thirties, she’s estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at a mall aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (Mountain Dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeno). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro’s only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro’s last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager. When Dolores is sold to a wealthy investor intent on moving her to a private aquarium, Ro finds herself on the precipice of self-destruction. Wading through memories of her youth, Ro has one last chance to come to terms with her childhood trauma, recommit to those around her, and find her place in an ever-changing world.

In a conversation with Frances Cha, Gina Chung talks about her debut novel.

Sea Change will be available for sale during the event.

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About the Author:

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in Brooklyn, New York. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Catapult, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Idaho Review, The Rumpus, Pleiades, F(r)iction, and Wigleaf, among others, and has been recognized by several contests, including the American Short(er) Fiction Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest.

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 September, 2023.