Magpie Series in Modern and Contemporary Korean Literature opens new horizons in Korean literature in English translation by introducing exciting new literary voices from Korea, past and present. The series includes literary fiction and compelling works from the world of South Korean science fiction, fantasy, and horror. A reflexive picture of Korea and the breakneck speed of its changing interactions with the world, Magpie’s catalogue can be found here!

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September 19 | 7-9PM ET | NEW ADDRESS: 529 W 20th St, Room 6E, New York, NY 10011 | RSVP here!

Moderated by Jane Kim,  Korean American authors Alice Sola Kim, Cathy Park Hong, Ed Park, Gina Chung, and Hannah Bae discuss their work in relation to the spirit of radicalism in the Korean diasporic imaginary as exemplified by the latest installments in Kaya Press’ Magpie Series for Korean Literature in Translation: Djuna‘s speculative fiction Not Yet Gods and the historical recovery project Song of Arirang. Attendees are invited to bring excerpts meaningful to their own political and creative development, which will be collated into zines on-site to take home. An official 2025 Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends Event, sponsored by the USC Dornislife Korean Studies Institute!

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House and Profile Books (UK). Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recognition on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo’um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her prose and poetry have been published in the New York Times, New Republic, the Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is a Full Professor in English at UC Berkeley.

Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams (2023), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days (2008), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as the story collection An Oral History of Atlantis (2025). His work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice, and has worked in newspapers and book publishing.

Alice Sola Kim is an American science fiction writer. Her writings have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tin House, Lenny Letter, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Buzzfeed, and Strange Horizons.

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was a 2023 B&N Discover Pick and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection Green Frog. 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, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Idaho Review, among others.

Hannah Bae is a Korean American freelance journalist, nonfiction writer and illustrator who is at work on a memoir about family estrangement and mental illness. She is the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a 2021 and 2022 Peter Taylor Fellow for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. She is a proud former student of Evelina’s. You can connect with her at @hanbae on Twitter and @hannahbae on Instagram.

Jane Kim is the culture editor at The Atlantic. Previously, she was the culture editor at The Village Voice, the essays editor at Racked, and an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America.