Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an acclaimed Korean-American writer and author of the novel Somebody’s Daughter. Her next novel, The Evening Hero, on the future of medicine, immigration, North Korea, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster. She graduated from Brown University and was a Writer in Residence there before she began teaching at Columbia University’s Writing Division.
Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, and The Guardian, among others. She was the first Fulbright Scholar to Korea in creative writing and has received many honors for her work, including an O. Henry honorable mention, the Best Book Award from the Friends of American Writers, and a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts fiction fellowship and is a current New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellow.
She has been a Yaddo and MacDowell Colony fellow and has served as a judge for the National Book Award and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. In addition, Ms. Lee is a founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and was an Our Word Writer in Residence for the Columbia MFA program.
Read More: Visit Columbia University’s Faculty Snapshot of Marie here.
Featured
Publications
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- ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ and the racist art of naming a virus– Salon→
- The Things They Carry — NY Times→
- J. Stands Up — The Paris Review→
- Eat Turkey, Become American — NY Times →
- What My Son’s Disabilities Taught Me About ‘Having It All’ — The Atlantic →
- Want to Be a Better Worker? Please Consult This Horse —The Atlantic→
- Perverse Incentives —The Atlantic →
- What It Was Like to Be a Woman at Goldman Sachs —The Atlantic →
- What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting — The Atlantic →
- Losing My Religion — Tricycle→
- What Muffins Say About Mitt Romney — NY Times →
- Picnic In North Korea —NY Times →
- La Piñata — Joyland →
In the Works
With echoes of Marijke Nijkamp and Jason Reynolds, acclaimed author Marie Myung-ok Lee’s stunning YA homage to Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men tells the tragic story of a Korean-American teen who fights to protect herself and her neurodivergent older brother from a hostile community.
Moving beyond the quasi-fraternal bond of the unforgettable George and Lenny from Of Mice and Men, Hurt You explores the actual sibling bond of Georgia and Leonardo da Vinci Daewoo Kim, who has an unnamed neurological disability that resembles autism. The themes of race, disability, and class spin themselves out in a suburban high school where the Kim family has moved in order to access better services for Leonardo.