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Christine is one of those overnight successes that is a decade in the making. Her essay about having a stroke at age thirty-three lead to a two-book contract: a memoir will be out in 2017 followed by a novel in 2018. She’s also a stellar presence on social media, one of those people you feel you’ve truly befriended because she’s so generous and funny and brilliant in her online personality, as in life. Speaking of social media, promotion in general was one of our topics.
Christine served as the fiction editor of Kartika Review, “a national literary arts magazine that publishes Asian Pacific Islander American fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and art,” and she gave us tips from the submissions-receiving side of the long climb to publication. Hilarious and helpful.
We also talked about structure, omission and selection in writing memoir, asking your character who drives the book, character mischief, and character change in both fiction and memoir. We delved into the differences between journaling, blogging and memoir–as well as the author note itself. We considered the role of self-discovery and cribbing structure, and the importance of Kurt Vonnegut.
Links
“I Had a Stroke at 33:” http://www.buzzfeed.com/xtinehlee/i-had-a-stroke-at-33#3zhfw3g
Kartika Review: http://kartikareview.com/
Christine has amazing bios, and offers a variety of versions. You can check them all out at her web site: http://www.christinehlee.com/
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee has a memoir (WHOLE 2017) and a novel (GOLEM OF SEOUL 2018), both of which are forthcoming from Ecco. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies such as ZYZZYVA, Guernica,The Rumpus, The New York Times, Hyphen Magazine, BuzzFeed, and Men Undressed.
Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her MFA at Mills College. She has been awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, and her pieces have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and placed in competitions such as the Poets and Writers’ Magazine Writers Exchange Contest, Glimmer Train Fiction Open, and others.
Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.
The hosts:
Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.
Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.
In an article for BuzzFeed , Christine Hyung-Oak Lee admits wondering if her white boyfriend would enjoy the show.