Category Archives: News

San Francisco Week

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hiveLater this week I’ll be in San Francisco, for the west coast launch at The Hive.  The essentials:

Saturday, May 30
Doors open at 7 pm; reading at 7:30 pm
The Hive, San Francisco
Pacific Avenue at Hyde (21+)

I’ll be reading with Andy Raskin, author of The Ramen King and I.  Check out the quick entry in the Chronicle’s weekly Literary Guide.

In addition, we’ll be drinking with Tony on Thursday:

Thursday, May 28
4pm – 6pm Pacific Time
87.9fm, San Francisco
Streamed at Pirate Cat Radio
Hosted by Tony DuShane

hyphen-logoHyphen Magazine, based in San Francisco, interviewed me via email a little while ago, and now it’s up: The WRITE Questions with Sung Woo.

One thing I’ll definitely do in this great city: stand in line with everybody else at Tartine Bakery.  We did it last time we were there, and I can’t wait to go back.

Book Notes at Largehearted Boy

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lhbNobody weaves literature and music together like Largehearted Boy:

Like many readers today I am drawn to immigrant fiction, but too often the books rely on tired cliches and/or uninspired storytelling. Thankfully, that is not the case with Sung J. Woo’s exceptional debut novel, Everything Asian. Woo’s interconnected stories capture the reality of the immigrant experience while also exploring the Kims’ dysfunctional family, often through the honest eyes of young son David. Woo’s portrait of 80’s suburban New Jersey strip mall culture (told from South Korean immigrants’ perspective) is one of the year’s most surprising novels, the rare book that left me yearning for a sequel.

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BookBrowse, Reviews, and Another Kind of Review

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Catching up:

1) I’ll be on the front page of BookBrowse for one more day.  So if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s your chance.

2) A review from Asian American Literature Fans:

I spent most of yesterday reading Sung J. Woo’s Everything Asian.  Reading has always been for me, in the end, a source of entertainment and pleasure and such was the case with Woo’s felicitous first novel.

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3) A review from LibrarysCat, a LibraryThing Early Reviewer:

While I do not know David Kim, his sister, parents, or friends, I can certainly feel their pangs of growth in this process of acculturation in Sung J. Woo’s debut novel Everything Asian.

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4) From Fiction Writers Review:

Highlights for fiction writers included a morning talk by Sung Woo (Everything Asian), entitled “Finishing Your First Novel: A Three-Pronged Attack,” which gave writers thoughtful advice on how to sustain the writing process over the course of many years and many more pages.

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AABF: Day 2

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aabflogoThe second day of the Ann Arbor Book Festival is history, and so am I.  Tomorrow I’m doing my best Willie Nelson imitation, on the road again, trekking from Michigan back to New Jersey.  On the drive over, I listened to William Shatner’s extremely entertaining Up Till Now, his autobiography.  I still have a couple of hours to go, and after that’s done, I’ll need to kill another seven hours or so with another audiobook.

The best way to recount the day may be through photos, so here they come.

Continue reading →

AABF: Finishing Your First Novel – A Three-Pronged Attack

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aabflogoThe day was long and the night is growing short.  My session at 10am (“Finishing Your First Novel – A Three-Pronged Attack”) went very well (p.s., for the folks who were there and are looking for the supporting material).  Elizabeth Kostova‘s keynote was informative and entertaining, and Colson Whitehead‘s session was an absolute laughfest.  I also got to meet Jeremiah Chamberlin of Fiction Writers Review, Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books, and a great number of the Third Annual Writer’s Conference participants.

Up tomorrow is the author breakfast at 8:30am and then the debut novel panel with Katie Crouch at 1:30pm.  I’m looking forward to attending the Place as Theme panel with Colson Whitehead, Valerie Laken, and Steve Amick at 3pm.  Everything after the breakfast is free and open to the public, so if you are in the area, please stop by the AABF street festival!

Ann Arbor Book Festival

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aabflogoThe Ann Arbor Book Festival is almost here!  I’ll be participating in the festival on both Friday and Saturday, so please come on by.  There’s a huge number of events happening; the following is a list of my appearances:

Friday, May 15, 10am
Writer’s Conference Session
Palmer Commons, 100 Washtenaw Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109
“Finishing Your First Novel: A Three-Pronged Attack”

Friday, May 15, 6-7:30pm
Author Reception
Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Saturday, May 16, 8:30am
Author Breakfast
Hussey Room, 2nd floor of the Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Saturday, May 16, 1:30pm
Debut Novels; with Katie Crouch
Stage 2, Ingalls Mall, 915 E Washington St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109

A Mom and Pop Store, and Then Some

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generations_retailI knew how to count from 1 to 10 in English. I could recite the alphabet. And that was about it.

Ronald Reagan was starting his first term as president when I immigrated from South Korea with my mother and two older sisters. We came to reunite with my father, who had set up an Asian gift shop in Manasquan, N.J., and there I was, 10 years old and fresh off the plane, standing behind the bank of showcases in the middle of our store, waiting to serve customers.

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An essay on the realities of retail that I wrote for the Times.

The Z That Somehow Became a ts

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89It had to happen sooner or later, I suppose.  I knew one day I would find a typo in the book, and that day turned out to be Thursday evening.  After the Boston Public Library reading, a friend was kind enough to throw me a book party at her place, and I decided to read from the chapter “In Young Kim,” starting on page 89.  And as I was reading it out loud, I saw it on the second paragraph:

“The best she could do was peejaa because there was no such sound as ts in Korean, but this was not important.”

I suppose it’s technically true — there is no such sound as “ts” in Korean.  But it’s wrong!  It should’ve been the letter “Z,” and I have proof.  On the galleys (the advance readers copy), this was correctly laid out, as you can see from the graphic (click it to see the scanned page in full — I’ve underlined it).

So the letter Z somehow became a ts.  And all I can say to that is…tsk tsk tsk.  What can you do — the book is now in print, so the best I can hope is that the paperback edition will reflect the correction.

Dear readers, if you find more typos, please let me know.  You’ll have my eternal gratitude.