Episode 227 with Gina Chung, Author of Green Frog, a Dazzling Collection of Poignant, Offbeat, Chillingly-Realistic and Fantastical Stories

Notes and Links to Gina Chung’s Work

 

   For Episode 227, Pete welcomes Gina Chung, and the two discuss, among other topics, The Babysitters Club’s lasting impact, her early relationship with words and bilingualism, finding great storytelling in her parents’ example and in folktales and animal myths, her master touch with disparate stories and characters, and salient topics from the story collection like parental/child relationships and expectations, grief and memory, and one’s connection with her forebears. 

 

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel SEA CHANGE (Vintage, March 28, 2023; Picador, April 13, 2023 in the Commonwealth and in the UK on August 10, 2023), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, an Asian/Pacific American Award for Adult Fiction Honor, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection GREEN FROG (Vintage, March 12, 2024; out in the UK/Commonwealth from Picador on June 6, 2024). A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School's Creative Writing Program and a BA in literary studies from Williams College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Idaho Review, The Rumpus, Pleiades, and F(r)iction, among others.

 

Buy Green Frog

 

 

Gina's Website

 

Review of Green Frog-Kirkus

At about 2:35, Gina shouts places to buy her book, Green Frog, and about her feelings a few weeks before the book’s release

At about 4:25, Gina recounts what she’s heard from early readers of her collection

At about 6:05, Gina responds to Pete’s questions about storytellers in her life and her early language and reading life

At about 10:10, Gina talks about her early reading delights

At about 12:10, Babysitters Club love!

At about 13:15, Gina talks about her writing journey and her confidence peaks and valleys

At about 16:40, Gina shouts out “amazing” contemporary writers, such as Rebecca K. Riley and Jiaming Tang 

At about 18:40-21:25, Gina talks about seeds for her collection and gives background on the title story and the “Green Frog” folktale

At about 21:25-22:40, Gina talks about daily and informal observation that inspired “Mantis” and other stories in the collection

At about 24:40, Gina speaks to her rationale and the background in picking the Emily Jungmin Yoon-inspired epigraph

At about 26:25, Pete and Gina discuss “How to Eat Your Own Heart,” the collection’s first story, including profound quotes (27:10-30:20)

At about 31:00, Gina speaks to ideas of regeneration in the above story and gives some background on how the story came from a Zoom “Knife Skills” course

At about 34:25, The two further discuss the title story of the collection 

At about 36:20, Pete asks Gina about the meanings of “here” in the title story 

At about 39:30, Themes of community in “The Fruits of Sin” are discussed 

At about 40:35, Belief is discussed in conjunc

At about 41:15, Grief and the importance of rabbits in Korean culture and beyond are discussed in connection to a moving story from the collection

At about 43:40, Pete quotes an important and universal passage as he and Gina talk about memory’s throughline in the collection; the two ruminate on connections to The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

At about 50:20, Gina reflects on a moving story that deals with memory and technology

At about 54:00, The two talk about mother-daughter and parent-child relationships in the collection

At about 57:40, Pete quotes a poignant and skillfully crafted passage

At about 59:15, Gina gives a ballpark for how long of a range the stories were written in and throughlines that she has identified in her collection 

At about 1:03:00, Gina talks change in characters and its external and internal characteristics 

 

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    Please tune in for Episode 228 with Jazmina Barrera Velásquez, who is a fellow at the Foundation for Mexican Letters. Her book of essays, Cuerpo extraño, was awarded the Latin American Voices prize from Literal Publishing in 2013, and she is the editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope, and author of, most recently, Cross-Stitch. 

   The episode will air on March 19.

 

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