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February 23, 2009
Nami Mun, MFA'07
Miles from Nowhere, Riverhead Books, 2008.
The book: Joon is a Korean immigrant whose parents have crumbled under the weight of her father's infidelity; he has left the family, and mental illness has rendered her mother nearly catatonic. So Joon, at the age of 13, decides she would be better off on her own; a choice that commences a harrowing and often tragic journey that exposes the painful difficulties of a life lived on the margins. Joon's adolescent years take her from a homeless shelter to an escort club, through struggles with addiction, to jobs selling newspapers and cosmetics, committing petty crimes and, finally, toward something resembling hope.
The author: Nami Mun won a Hopwood Award for fiction while at U-M and has since received a Pushcart Prize as well as several scholarships and residencies. Her stories have been published in the 2007 Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Iowa Review, Evergreen Review, Witness and other journals. Tin House named her an Emerging Voice of 2005. She lives and teaches in Chicago.
Web site: http://milesfromnowherethenovel.wordpress.com/
Posted by tobiaslw at February 23, 2009 05:15 PM