Madison's RJ Julia will host a book discussion with authors Angie Kim (Miracle Creek), Julia Philips (Disappearing Earth), and Courtney Maum (I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch, Costalegre) on June 13 at 7 p.m. Maum will moderate a discussion between Kim and Philips about their debut novels.
About the books:
Miracle Creek begins in rural Virginia, where Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine―a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.
Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night―trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges―as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.
Disappearing Earth takes readers through a year in Kamchatka, at the northeastern edge of Russia, where two sisters, ages eight and 11, go missing on an August afternoon. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
About the authors:
Angie Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. She attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, then practiced as a trial lawyer at Williams & Connolly. Her stories have won the Glamour Essay Contest and the Wabash Prize in Fiction, and appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Southern Review, Sycamore Review, The Asian American Literary Review, and PANK. Kim lives in northern Virginia with her husband and three sons.
Julia Phillips is a Fulbright fellow whose writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Moscow Times. She lives in Brooklyn.
If you are unable to attend, but would like to purchase copies of their books, they can be ordered here.
RJ Julia is located at 768 Boston Post Road in Madison, Conn. To register for the event, click here.
