Category: Arts & Culture

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

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

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.

 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.

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.