#ro kwon

[mooncello]

R.O. Kwon

Writing CoLab's 100 Days of Creative Resistance

[sarahspy]

I kept listening. Often, at parties, I could be found in the kitchen, a back porch, eliciting still more troubles. If people cried, I held damp hands. With the squash recruit, too; the ball-pit poet, the flautist; Tim, then Phil, it wasn't lust. Plain lust, I'd have respected. Instead, I craved the postcoital talks, the truths told in bed. I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in, I'd have no space left to fit my own. In turn, I couldn't walk five minutes through Noxhurst without hearing a dozen hellos. Faces lit up if I walked into a room, the liking a light I could refract, giving it back. Phoebe, oh, I love that girl, people said, but it's possible they all just loved the reflected selves.

R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries

[wellconstructedsentences]

I want to live on a planet that can hold us. I believe we can all still help it, us, do so. If nothing else, why not try? Why not hope, and then act as if? This is our one wild, lone home; what other choice do we have?

R.O. Kwon

[katefishernyc]

I had so much fun doing micro-reviews of my favorite reads from 2020, that I decided to do a monthly round up. Here’s what I read this January and my quick thoughts on each. Stay tuned for February’s list next month.

January 2021 Reading Round-Up

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (2020)

genre-bending

important commentary about Asian identity in the U.S.

what is real vs. performative

weird, but I liked it.

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener (2020)

well written and interesting

memoir that reads like a novel

sometimes self indulgent (but, ok: memoir)

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

loved the multiple timelines

gorgeous writing

Shakespeare is never mentioned by name → cool

caution warning: bubonic plague

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey (2020) 

probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked it

every chapter is a different conversation in the narrator’s life

I like unlikable narrators, so

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon (2018)

has been on my bookshelf a long time

cults, fire, college

a debut novel

some great writing

didn’t really “get” parts from cult leader’s POV 

[riverheadbooks]

Riverhead Books on Instagram

Happy pub day to R.O. Kwon and her highly anticipated debut novel, THE INCENDIARIES!

@usatoday calls it “urgent in its timeliness, dizzyingly beautiful in its prose.”

GOOP says it’s “too gorgeous to read only once.”

The NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW calls it “radiant…a dark, absorbing story of how first love can be as intoxicating and dangerous as religious fundamentalism.” 

Get your copy today!!!

[riverheadbooks]

Why I Don’t Leave the House Without Putting on Black Eye Shadow

I began wearing black eye shadow during a period in my life when I realized that how I looked was ill-matched to how I felt.

“People often assume I’m harmless, someone who’ll let them get away with unacceptable behavior, and what I hope to convey, a little, even if it’s just with a centimeter of extra makeup, is that I’m not, I won’t.”

[feralprodigy]

The, one night, while I was taking a walk alone, I noticed a loud throng of students turning into a gate. It was left propped open; I followed them in. Hip-hop pulsed, rolled. Pale limbs shone. I'd learned that the alcohol table was the one place where I could stand without looking too isolated, and I was idling at my usual station, finishing a third drink, when a girl in a striped dress tripped.

The Incendiaries, R.O. Kwon

[feralprodigy]

But this is where I start having trouble, Phoebe. Buildings fell. People died. You once told me I hadn't even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying.

The Incendiaries, R.O. Kwon