GYMNASIA PRESS

New novel, coming soon

2014, Seoul, South Korea. The Sewol sinks. Russia takes Crimea. A novel flu threatens to turn the world upside down. Nunmaker, expatriate American, is fired without cause from one of three jobs. His wife, Ha, leaves him, but he doesn’t realize it until movers come for her piano. With new employment in the unofficial Chinatown of Seoul, gathering information on copyright infringement, Nunmaker discovers a new purpose and is forced to face his own counterfeits.

Short stories

In these stories of unease, readers will find an ailing son trying to rewrite his father’s ignoble death, a Seoul taxi driver who succumbs to a devil’s plan, a park that offers one man redemption, and another, King George’s in Hong Kong, that haunts its one-time visitor. Throughout these tales a pan-Asian modernity has East and West entwined and restless for meaning in a vision seldom presented by popular culture. Here lies a hand on the sleeping violence of urban globalized living.

Wayward bildungsroman

Concerning education, Nietzsche asked, “How can the individual be integrated into the counterpoint of private and public culture; how can he both sing the melody and simultaneously make it the accompaniment?” At its core, this is the same question explored in Nonlocal.

Nonlocal is the story of Kohlhaas, Korean by birth, but raised in America—an outsider in both societies. His return to South Korean culture, both in Seoul and that which is preserved and managed at the M School for Overseas Koreans in Qingdao, China, is a jarring experience that leaves him searching for meaning deeper than national identity.