A Korean-American novelist’s new book focuses on two families’ reckoning of the 1992 L.A. riots
Steph Cha told me she wanted to write about the L.A. she knew. Her new novel, Your House Will Pay, is a literary thriller that intertwines the fates of two families from a murder. The novel is told through the perspectives of its protagonists: Grace Park is a sheltered, second-generation Korean American woman who works as a pharmacist for her family’s business in the Valley. Shawn Matthews is a middle-aged African American ex-con, who cannot seem to shake his violent past while trying to live a quiet family life in Palmdale.
The novel’s conflict centers around a shooting in the…
This Haitian American author shakes up young adult literature with characters who transcend universes
Ibi Zoboi’s first novel, American Street, established her as a powerful new voice in young adult fiction. A Haitian American coming-of-age story set in Detroit, it landed on numerous best of 2017 lists and was a National Book Award finalist. Since then, she has published an anthology, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America, and a second novel for teens, Pride, a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set in Bushwick.
For her third novel, due out on August 27 from Dutton Books, Zoboi turned to her own first love: science fiction. Set in the 1980s…
ZORA
Bold, yet refined. A publication from Medium for Black women.
