Frances Cha’s riveting debut novel If I Had Your Face, depicts four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, ruthless social hierarchies and K-pop mania. She speaks with Nancy Jooyoun Kim, author of The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller. Her debut novel illustrates the devastating realities of being an immigrant in America, through the relationship between a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other.

They will be in conversation with comedian and writer Karen Chee, who will be speaking from South Korea.

All authors appear for free and the best way you can support them is to buy their book. Frances' and Nancy's books are available from Festival partner Watchung Booksellers here.

Frances Cha is a former travel and culture editor for CNN in Seoul. She grew up in the United States, Hong Kong, and South Korea. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia University MFA writing program, she has written for The Atlantic, The Believer, and Yonhap News, among other publications, and has lectured at Columbia University, Ewha University, Seoul National University, and Yonsei University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters. If I Had Your Face is her first novel.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese's Book Club pick. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, NPR/PRI’s Selected Shorts, Salon, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Karen Chee is a comedian and writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. She has also written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Golden Globes. She is currently writing a humor collection (Holt/Macmillan), which should come out in about 50 years, if not later.

This event is part of Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival's special series of author events, Global Voices taking place on March 20 and March 21, 2021, and featuring authors and poets from England, Scotland, Ireland, Korea, Iran, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and Spain.  The fifth annual Montclair Literary Festival will take place on Saturday October 2, 2021, with a combination of live and online events.

See all of the talks by following us on Crowdcast here or visiting our website events page here.

Any proceeds from the festival benefit parent organization, Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education and opportunity gaps in Essex County, NJ. You can read more about Succeed2gether and the festival at www.succeed2gether.org.

The festival organizing committee wishes to thank event partners Montclair Public Library and Watchung Booksellers, and festival sponsors Rao's, West of Hudson Realty Group, Jill Williams (Ameriprise Financial), Ferguson Dental, the County of Essex, and community members.

Bringing Korean Stories to the World with Nancy Jooyoun Kim and Frances Cha