Second Review for Love Love, Plus POPSUGAR Sweetness

So the second review is now available online, and it’s the best of the bunch.  So good that the lovely people at Booklist gave me a starred review.

BOL

Woo’s follow-up to his debut, Everything Asian (2009), follows two adult siblings forced to confront their dissatisfaction with their lives. Judy Lee is a 38-year-old temp who has more or less given up on her dreams of being an artist, while her older brother, Kevin, has been teaching tennis at a country club since his professional tennis career came to an end. Their father is dying of renal failure, but Kevin’s plans to donate a kidney to him come to a screeching halt when he learns he is not only not a match for his father, he is not even his biological son. This discovery turns Kevin’s world upside down, sending him on a quest for his birth parents and forcing him to confront his grief over the breakup of his marriage. Judy, who blames her father for the death of her mother, won’t even consider donating a kidney. Woo’s observations about aging, loss, and disillusionment are so smart, so sharp and astute that they’ll haunt readers long after the final page has been turned. That he manages to find the beauty, humor, and even optimism in the struggle makes this glorious, at times painful, but always rewarding novel a stunning achievement. — Kristine Huntley

This title has been recommended for young adult readers:

YA/Mature Readers: Though the Lee siblings are older, their plights–one wrestling with a new love, the other searching for his birth parents–will intrigue sophisticated readers. —Kristine Huntley

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And then to top it off (with sugar), Brenda Janowitz at POPUSGAR picked Love Love as one of the best 2015 Fall Books!  Life is great.  Thank you, universe.

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Third Review for Love Love

logo-consumerThe good folks at Publishers Weekly reviewed Love Love, and again, I’m relieved and thankful!

Woo’s poignant, engrossing follow up to 2009’s Everything Asian chronicles the lives of two adult siblings—responsible, organized Kevin Lee and his scattered younger sister, Judy—when a medical procedure surprisingly reveals that Kevin was adopted. After seeing how her father treated her dying mother, in addition to a lifetime of his withering disapproval, Judy is indifferent to the fact that her elderly dad now needs a new kidney. Kevin confronts him, then quits his job teaching tennis and goes to San Francisco on a quest to find out more about his birth parents. Both Kevin and Judy have endured recent divorces and miss their former spouses. Judy is attempting a relationship with erstwhile colleague Roger Nakamura, who seems to have a few secrets. After accepting an offer to stay in California with Claudia St. James, the eccentric mother of one of his precocious students, Kevin begins a physical relationship with her. Woo’s narrative takes serendipitous turns—he has a knack for making these twists seem organic, like things that would happen in life. Scenes recounting memories of family and lost love are also skillfully interspersed. (Sept.)

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You may have noticed that this is the third review.  What happened to the second one?  I skipped it because it isn’t available online yet.  But it should be soon…

2015 Love Love Book Tour

booktourbanner Love Love Book Tour

(see the itinerary in Google Maps)

Tuesday, September 15 6pm
Book Passage (with Bucky Sinister)
1 Sausalito, San Francisco ferry Bldg #42
San Francisco, CA 94111

Thursday, September 17 7pm
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd
W. Hollywood, CA 90069

Saturday, September 19
Cornell Club of Los Angeles
private event

Monday, September 21 7pm
Magers & Quinn
3038 Hennepin Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55408

Thursday, September 24 7pm
The Book Cellar
4736 N. Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60625

Sunday, September 27
BookCourt
The Eagle and the Wren Reading Series
163 Court St
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Wednesday, October 7
Wells College Visiting Writers Series
Wells College
Aurora, NY

Thursday, October 8 5pm
Buffalo Street Books
The Dewitt Mall
215 N Cayuga Street
Ithaca, NY 14850

[and a few more to come…]

The Suitcase, on The Margins

Coldwell-StillLifeSuitcase-sung-woo

Still Life with Suitcase, Paul Coldwell (aaww.org)

‘Our apartment, our home, became an unfamiliar space. We still slept in the same queen bed, but no longer did we speak of upgrading to the capacious king. We could now easily fit two additional people in the valley of the bedsheet between us.’

It’s Fiction Friday at AAWW’s The Margins, and I’m so very proud to have my story up there.  It’s titled “The Suitcase,” and the first decent draft of this story that was sent out to various journals was back in April 12, 2007.  That is not a misprint — this story has been waiting for a home for eight years.  I never gave up on it, rewriting it at least a dozen times.  The original version ran almost 5000 words.  The published one runs around 3500.  I guess I finally figured out how to leave out all the bad parts.

Huge thanks to Anelise Chen, the fiction editor at The Margins, who gave me such great critiques and suggested a new beginning.  Thanks also to Mary Gaitskill, who held a master class at NYU a couple of years back.  Lucky for me, this story was one of the ones she chose to workshop; I still have the manuscript she marked up in my files (tiny print in pencil!).  And finally, thanks to Michael Bahler, who edited an earlier version and helped me reshape it and make it so much better.

KoreAm Column: In the Palm of My Hand

Pot-SungWoo-AM15

My April/May column for KoreAm Journal is now available online, and what a privilege it is that I got to write about my love of art, and of one artist’s works in particular: Dina Brodsky‘s latest miniature marvels. Now I can type lots of pretty adjectives to describe her paintings, but words can only do so much.  Do yourself a favor and see her circular portals in person.  Her solo show, Cycling Guide to Lilliput, Prologue, will be opening on Wednesday, May 20, 7-9pm at Island Weiss Gallery (islandweiss.com/exhibitions, 201 East 69th Street, Penthouse M, New York, NY 10021; (212) 861-4608; island@islandweiss.com).

Times Private Lives Column in Newsis, the Largest Private News Agency in Korea

 

So here’s something unexpectedly delightful — Newsis, the largest private news agency in Korea (similar to the Associated Press), picked up my Private Lives column and wrote a story about it.  They sort of retold the bulk of the story in Korean, so I can now hand this over to my mother today.  Happy Easter indeed!  I’m grateful to Newsis and the writer of the article, 노창현.  It was also included in Newsroh, a Korean online newspaper!

KoreAm Column: Welcome to the Club

erasure

My bi-monthy column for KoreAm Journal for March/April features the music of my youth, Erasure in particular.  Enjoy!

First-World Problems: Welcome to the Club

This past New Year’s Eve, I was on the second floor of Terminal 5, a concert hall in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Leaning over the railing, I screamed, “I love to hate you!” with the rest of the frenzied crowd below me, above me, all around me. As the song reached its end, the singer segued into a countdown, and then he yelled, “Happy New Year!” Gold balloons and white confetti rained down from above, and then we all sang the next song, “I try to discover, a little something to make me sweeter …”

If you are of a certain age and Asian American, there’s a high likelihood that you know these two songs are “Love to Hate You” and “A Little Respect.” This was my first time seeing Erasure. I probably should’ve done this a quarter of a century ago, but back then, I didn’t even know who they were, and more to the point, I didn’t know who I was.

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11/18/14: Flash Fiction Reading

lafayette

I judged a Lafayette College flash fiction contest last month, and now it’s almost time to celebrate!  I’ll be reading from my own flash fiction, so if you are in the area (Easton, PA), please come on by.

Flash Fiction Reading

When:
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 – 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Where:
Gendebien Room, Skillman Library

Student winners of the 2014 Flash Fiction contest will read their work alongside the contest judge, writer Sung Woo. Refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

First-World Problems, My Column in KoreAm Journal

I’m very proud to announce that I’ve been asked to be a columnist for KoreAm Journal, a magazine I’ve contributed to from time to time.  First-World Problems is what I’m calling it, and the inaugural column appears in this month’s issue.  It is available in print and online, so please check it out.

First-World Problems

Hi there. My name is Sung, and if you’ve been a longtime KoreAm reader, you may have read some of my essays in the magazine over the years. I’m a writer, which means I actually don’t do a lot of writing. Mostly I spend my time staring out a window with a blank look on my face, or Googling something integral to the subject at hand only to find myself an hour later reading about the life cycle of mollusks. (I wish I was joking, but alas.)

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