About this Event
Join us for an in-person event with award winning author Jinwoo Chong for a discussion of his new novel I Leave It Up to You. Joining Jinwoo in conversation is critically acclaimed novelist Crystal Hana Kim. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator. Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by 2/20 to request.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact .
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From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.
Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, too: That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.
There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.
Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You navigates loss, love, and the absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.
Photo credit: Kristen Fedor
Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and VCU Cabell First Novel awards, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and named a best book of the year by Esquire, GQ, and Cosmopolitan. His short stories and other work have appeared in The Southern Review, Guernica, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature. He lives in New York.
Crystal Hana Kim is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Stone Home (2024), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Prize and current longlist for the Joyce Carol Oates Award, and If You Leave Me (2018), which was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. Kim is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and the winner of a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 7.81 to USD 34.51
