"I read your book." | Sung J. Woo

All you need is love, sang a certain famous quartet.  They’re right, of course.

1) The lovely folks at Fiction Writers Review chose my book in their “A Valentine: Books We Loved in 2009” feature.  The love is mutual!

2) At I Am Korean American, where Korean Americans from all over the country give themselves a little bit of personal love.  From the site’s About page:

Our goal is to compile a collection of profiles that showcase the diversity and many interesting personalities of the Korean American population. We hope that our collective efforts will provide a snapshot of the Korean American community at this point in our history.

Yesterday was my day, so check it out.

3) Significant Objects, which I partook in last year, is like the Energizer Bunny — it keeps going and going.  The first one was an experiment, but the subsequent ones have been for charity.  They raised $2244.11 for 826 National with SOv2.  Love it!  They wished they had a giant check, so I made one for them.

4) A typo — the APALA award I won wasn’t for 2009, it was 2010!  I still get confused about doing my 2009 taxes in 2010, so this is not surprising.  In any case, the APALA had the following to say about my book.

Youth Literature Winner
Woo, Sung. Everything Asian. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009.

Set in early-1980s suburban New Jersey, David Kim is a 12 year old who just moved from Korea to America with his older sister Susan and mother to reunite with his father who moved years earlier. The journey only begins once the family reunites and face many obstacles to bond and adjust living together in a new country. Without any memory of his father or knowing any English, David spends most of his free time helping out at East Meets West, his father’s gift shop in a strip mall where the family really gets to know each other and their mall neighbors. Everything Asian presents a well-rounded portrayal of the joys and troubles of the immigrant experience told mostly from the perspective of David, as well as the Kims and other mall merchants to get a full, inside-out understanding of the family and the community that surrounds them. Through David and Susan, this novel articulately details the experience of 1.5 generation Asian Americans, a perspective not commonly found in youth literature. From lighthearted comedy to very serious issues, Everything Asian covers a wide range of experiences and emotions that many Asian immigrants can relate to, but not always communicate. From choosing American names, taking English night classes and cooking turkey for Thanksgiving for the very first time, Everything Asian also portrays everything Asian Pacific American. (Jeffrey Sichaleune)

They were entirely too kind, but of course, I’ll take the love.  Read about the rest of the winners.

I’m not sure if there’s a better gift than winning something you had no idea about.  There’s no expectation, no pressure, nothing of the sort that’s going on with the athletes of the Olympics right now.  Yesterday, I found out that Everything Asian won the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Youth category.  Apparently the press release came out more than three weeks ago!  This is an award given by the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), which is an affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA).  The winners are as follows:

Picture Book Winner
Cora Cooks Pancit
Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore (illustrated by Kristi Valiant)

Picture Book Honor
Tan to Tamarind
Malathi Michelle Iyengar (illustrated by Jamel Akib)

Youth Literature Winner
Everything Asian
Sung Woo (that’s me!)

Youth Literature Honor
Tofu Quilt
Ching Yeung Russell

Adult Fiction Winner
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford

Adult Fiction Honor
Shanghai Girls
Lisa See

Adult Non-Fiction Winner
American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods
Bonnie Tsui

Adult Non-Fiction Honor
Japanese American Resettlement Through the Lens
Lane Ryo Hirabayashi

Previous authors who have received awards from the APALA include Jhumpa Lahiri and Chang-rae Lee, so to say that I’m honored is an understatement.

[read more]

If you go to Amazon today to buy a Kindle edition of my book, you won’t be able to.  Initially I thought it was an error, but actually, it’s just business.  From The New York Times:

Amazon.com has pulled books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, in a dispute over the pricing on e-books on the site.

The publisher’s books can be purchased only from third parties on Amazon.com.

A person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute, which has been brewing for a year, said Amazon was expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books. The person did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Macmillan wants Amazon to sell popular Kindle books for $15 rather than the ubiquitous $9.99.   So now they’re duking it out publically.  It’s sort of like seeing your parents fight right in front of your eyes.

Who doesn’t love cheap?  I know I do.  But there is a cost associated with plummeting prices, which you can read about in Cheap, a fantastic book written by Ellen Ruppel Shell, which you can still buy from Amazon — at least for now.

The Chicago Sun-Times has chosen my novel as one of their favorite books of 2009:

Sung J. Woo’s debut novel, Everything Asian, is a standout. Full of wit, humor and heart, the book succinctly captures the struggle of an immigrant child trying to fit into American society — and in his own dysfunctional family. —Jae-Ha Kim

Check out the rest of the list.

The poster for the new Meryl Streep-Alec Baldwin-Steve Martin movie, It’s Complicated, looks like this:

Two years back, a guy contacted me out of the blue and wanted to make a short film out of my short story “American Sister.”  A few back-and-forths later, I was writing the screenplay for it and a little while later, the film got made.  The promo shot for “Fork in Chopsticks” looks like this:

You can watch the film on IMDB.  It’s not exactly a faithful adaptation of the short story, nor is it a faithful execution of the script itself, but hey, I’m not complaining.  The fact that it got made, and that it had a showing in NYC, was more than enough for me, an early Christmas present for sure.

The interview I gave a little while ago has made its way to another part of the Internet, The Denver Post.  It also features a few more questions than one in the Hartford Courant, plus a gorgeous photo of Homer.  Enjoy!

A week ago, I was contacted by Contemporary Authors.  They told me I’ll be included in the next edition of the reference and asked me if I wanted to answer some questions for the sidebar part of the entry.

I have fond memories of these reference volumes.  I used CA a number of times when I wrote term papers for my English classes, both in high school and college, so to be actually listed in one is quite an honor.  True, I’ll be one of 112,000 writers listed there, but hey, I’m thrilled to have joined the fray!

And now, the questions they asked and the answers I provided.

What first got you interested in writing?

Two words, one name: Stephen King.  Back when I was a sophomore in high school, I was introduced by a friend to The Dead Zone, the first book I read purely for pleasure, and after reading King’s first short story collection, Night Shift, I attempted to write my first short story.  I’m fairly certain it featured some supernatural storyline, and I’m absolutely certain it was terrible.  But we all have to start out somewhere.

Who or what particularly influences your work?

I met Stewart O’Nan at Cornell back in 1992, when he taught my first creative writing workshop.  His editorial eye is unparalleled, and his body of work inspires me to write truthfully, to stick close to my characters.  Stewart also introduced me to Richard Yates, another writer whose literary currency was brutal, beautiful honesty.

Describe your writing process.

I write an hour before work.  On the days I’m not at work, I write from nine to noon.  But of course, life gets in the way, and sometimes the hour becomes half an hour, but I still try to sit in front of the laptop every day.

What is the most surprising thing you have learned as a writer?

There always seems to be a part – it may be as small as a sentence or as large as an entire chapter of  a novel – that seems so good, so perfect, that I won’t want to change it, even if it isn’t quite working.  But then I finally do rewrite it, and it actually turns out better than what I had before.  There’s nothing so flawlessly written that it cannot be improved.

What kind of effect do you hope your books will have?

When fiction really works, it has the power to make you forget about everything else going on in your life.  For those hours you spend reading, you’re living the life of the people in that book, a completely immersive experience, and perhaps an enlightening one, too.  That’s what I want for my readers.

Thirty-six events.  Driving to Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Flying to San Francisco.  Yesterday marked the eight-month anniversary of my novel’s publication, and I can now declare that the tour is done for 2009, because I have no more bookstores, colleges, or events to visit for the rest of the year.  I’ve done a lot of driving around for this tour:

April 10 – NJ indie bookstores visits – 230
April 11 – NJ indie bookstores visits – 180
April 18 – KGB reading – 122
April 25 – Borders @ Eatontown – 142
April 29 – Princeton Public Library – 96
April 30 – Boston Public Library (Metro Park, NJ) – 74
May 9 – CAAA – 122
May 14 – AABF – 606
May 19 – Cornell Club of Lancaster, PA – 200
May 21 – AAWW – 122
May 22 – Newark Airport Borders – 110
May 28 – Newark Airport for SF reading – 110
June 5 – to Ithaca, NY – 171
June 7 – from Ithaca, NY – 176
June 10 – Beatrice reading – 122
June 13 – Bootleg Books interview in Brooklyn – 136
June 14 – Books NJ (Paramus, NJ) – 122
June 18 – Cornell Club of Phillie – 138
June 23 – McGoldrick (Queens, NY) – 60
June 25 – Generations XYZ, NYC – 122
June 30 – Scotch Plains Library – 80
July 1 – Korea Society – 122
July 16 – KCCP Princeton – 97
July 31 – Brielle Library – 168
August 7 – Raconteur – 92
August 20 – hunterdon county lib – 51
September 12 – baltimore and gaithersberg, md – 224
September 13 – DC – 240
September 17 – Montclair – 104
September 19 – Princeton – 96
October 14 – Ridgewood, NJ – 123
October 20-22 – Aurora, NY – 398
November 4 – Easton, PA – 27
November 12 – NYC – 122
November 18 – Hackettstown – 28

That comes to a total of 5133 actual miles.  That’s New-Jersey-to-California-round-trip kind of miles.  I’m sort of floored by that number, but really, I shouldn’t be.  It’s the power of gradual accrual, and it’s how books are written, too, a page at a time.

Check out some nice photos from the Dirty Laundry reading with Ed Park, which was just all-around awesome.  Ed read a hilarious excerpt from his new novel (tentatively titled Disambiguation), and I read from my short story “Translation” [PDF].

The last photo is actually from Centenary College before I started reading (Smith Hall Rotunda).  This was a delight event — it was part of International Week, so I got to meet students from Korea, China, and Japan.

And that’s all she wrote.  Until next year, that is, when the paperback comes out.

I’m back on The Browser home page for today and tomorrow, in celebration of John Liu’s historic win:

History was made this week when John Liu became the first Asian-American to be elected financial officer of New York City. Author Sung J Woo says spring rolls are now as American as apple pie and he chooses the best Five Books on the Asian-American experience.

[read more]

Listen to writers read while you wait for your laundry…is that genius or what?  I’ll be there with the talented Ed Park:

Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose

Volume 21

When: Thursday, November 12th, 7:30pm – 8:30pm

Location: Avenue A Laundromat – 97 Avenue A between 6th and 7th Street (Google Maps)

This will be my last NYC reading for the year, so come on by.  And if you are still in the area (or lucky enough to live near the big city), don’t forget that the Asian American Literary Festival, Page Turner, will be gearing up that weekend.  Ed will be participating, and another fine Ed will be there as well.  Be there!