Joseph Han | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Education | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, professor |
| Honours | National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 |
| Website | joseph-han |
Joseph Han is a Korean American writer and professor. In 2022, he released his debut novel, Nuclear Family, which was published by Counterpoint Press, and was named in the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35. [1] [2]
Han was born in Seoul, South Korea, after which he grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii with his grandparents; his parents, and younger sister, joined him years later. [2]
In college, Han took an interest in writing, specifically around questions pertinent to the history of the Korean diaspora. He attended the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where he received a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Creative Writing and began working on his debut novel, Nuclear Family. [3] [2]
Han's work has been supported by the Kundiman Fellowship and Tin House. [4] He has also served as an editor for Joyland. [2] His writing—consisting of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—has been featured in LitHub , Gulf Coast, McSweeney's Internet Tendency , and others. [5] [6] [7] Additionally, after college, Han has taught Asian American literature, fiction writing, and composition at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and also served as a guest faculty member, in fiction, at the Antioch University Los Angeles' low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. [8] [2]
In 2022, Han released Nuclear Family, a novel following a Korean family in 2018, months before the false missile alert, living in Hawaii. Han had based it on his own experiences as a Korean immigrant living there and reflected "my own coming into awareness, as a Korean settler on Hawaiian land, of Korea and Hawai'i's entangled histories of US occupation and militarization." [2] [9] It was selected for NPR's Book of the Day and was named an "inventive debut" by the Los Angeles Times. [10] [11] In the same year, Han was named as a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree; he had been selected by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. [12]
Han is currently at work on his next book, a short story collection titled Monster House. [3]