Bo-mi, I’ve long admired your work, both as a reader and translator. Your ability to create such singular stories has always astonished me, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to talk more in-depth with you.

Your work often features parallel worlds and alternate realities. In your debut collection Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, a son dies in the opening story, “Blanket,” but survives and reappears in the last story. The young couple in “Blanket” become the protagonists in a story from a different collection. You’ve said that you “never forget that even characters who appear briefly have their own lives” and you’d like readers to approach your fiction as if they’re reading about real people. What draws you to parallel worlds and alternate realities?

When I look back, I realize I was a child deeply fascinated by events. Not just what happens in the visible world, but the hidden one I couldn’t see with my eyes. In elementary school, I read a lot of books about the supernatural. I pestered my mom to buy them for me. One book—I don’t remember the title now—was about the mysteries of the world. It was probably a translation, and it covered subjects like the whereabouts of the last Russian princess Anastasia, the Hollow Earth theory, and the secrets behind Agatha Christie’s disappearance. The last chapter was about witches. It claimed that witches still existed today and included photos of their rituals. I was ten years old at the time. I knew those photos were probably staged, but part of me thought, or maybe hoped, they were real, taken by someone who had infiltrated their secret world. To me, everything in that book was both real and fake, and this created a sense of confusion, which was probably intentional. Within that confusion, the world of the book seemed more plausible.

      Later on, when I became a writer, I often thought about the emotions that book stirred in me, and I wished my readers would experience my stories in the same way. I wanted them to believe my characters existed somewhere out there or, at the very least, to hope my characters were real. To achieve this, every character had to have their own life. Everyone lives their own story. The person who passed by me today, even if I don’t know them, is the main character of their life. Maintaining that sense—that even characters who appear briefly have their own lives—has always been crucial to me. It helped me discover the joy in writing.

In the afterword to Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, you say that you like to insert recurring characters in parallel worlds because you “enjoy imagining [yourself] living in an alternate universe, working hard and trying [your] best.” This, in turn, makes you “relieved, because [you’re] allowed to be a little lazy here.” I find this concept fascinating because it’s not just about creating alternate lives for your characters, but about seeing another version of yourself in a different reality. How does this idea influence your writing process? Does it help you connect more deeply with your characters? And how do you decide which characters to insert in these parallel worlds? 

For a long time, I didn’t realize this way of thinking influenced my work. It was more a way of comforting myself rather than something that affected my writing. However, this has changed recently as I began incorporating my life into my work. Of course, my personal life makes up less than ten percent of my writing, but even that’s quite significant for me. I used to think it would be difficult to include my experiences. I felt they were too ordinary and not worth using as material. And the more special experiences seemed too difficult to adapt because they were things I’d actually gone through.

      Recently, I began to see my experiences as part of what another version of me in a different universe might go through. The me living here might share small seeds of the same experiences with the me in another universe, but that me in the other universe would make different choices and treat people differently. This idea really intrigued me. For example, in my short story collection Dreams of Love, which was published last year, a place called Jungwoo Mansions comes up a lot. That was the name of the apartment I lived in as a child. The characters in the collection are different people, but they all share a common link—they’re versions of me from various universes, representing my different childhood selves. These days, the character I connect with the most is myself. 

You’re gifted at building intricate worlds in a small amount of space. I’m thinking of your enigmatic piece, “The Cat Thief,” which was published in Freeman’s in 2022 and later in Lit Hub. It’s stunning how you’re able to suggest entire histories of characters in just a thousand words. How do you achieve this?

I’m so glad you liked my story, “The Cat Thief”! I wrote that piece before I made my debut. Back then, I felt like I could never become a writer and was often engulfed in a sense of despair. I couldn’t write anything. The thought of writing a book was overwhelming. My confidant, who became my husband, was aware of my struggles and suggested that I try writing a story in the style of Project Runway. It’s an American reality competition show where designers create outfits within a set time and theme, and then their work is judged. I remember my husband saying, “If you don’t write anything, you’re out.” We decided on the subject (cats) and the length (two thousand characters). And we said we had two hours to finish it. We sat in a cafe and began writing. I took my actual experience—the time a man stole a tea timer for me—and added different details to it. I remember feeling a bit desperate, knowing I had only two hours to write. But this taught me that anything is possible in fiction. Before, I used to worry a lot, wondering, “Could this really happen? Isn’t this too farfetched?” But I decided to toss aside those doubts and gained the courage to set stories in foreign places and to write about ridiculous events, like stealing a cat. 

      My struggles with writing didn’t vanish after completing this piece, but I learned something crucial about the mindset needed to write a book. The next work I wrote became the title story of my first collection, Bringing Them the Lindy Hop. And Emerson from “The Cat Thief” appeared again in my first novel, Dear Ralph Lauren.

In the afterword to Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, you also mention that a seasoned writer criticized the second piece you ever wrote, saying it lacked authenticity. Though you were upset, you had an inkling of what he meant—that you were perhaps too free in writing about things you didn’t know. Similarly, when your story “Blanket” won the Dong-A Ilbo New Writer’s Contest, one of the judges questioned whether you’d done your research. You then noted that writing without meticulous attention or prior research could be fatal. How do you balance research with giving yourself the freedom to write about anything and everything? When do you decide that you’ve done enough research and it’s time to write? And how has this approach evolved throughout your career? 

Writing freely about things I don’t know and the sense of freedom I felt while writing “The Cat Thief” are slightly different. I used to write about subjects I wasn’t familiar with. In “Blanket,” the issue was with the protagonist’s rank in the police department. I was unaware of how police promotions worked and was told that a promotion like his would never happen. I realized that such misinformation could ruin the plausibility of the entire piece, undermining its sense of reality. After that, I made sure to thoroughly research the subjects I wrote about. Once, I wrote a novel set in France and spent a lot of time on Google Maps and hotel websites to accurately depict the streets, the city, and the hotels. Later, readers asked if I’d ever been to Lyon, and I was thrilled when they were surprised to hear I hadn’t.

      However, the freedom I felt while writing “The Cat Thief” is a bit different. It has less to do with objective facts and more to do with my mindset while writing. Objective facts need to be accurate and shouldn’t be compromised. But beyond that, I believe you should be able to write anything. Characters can go anywhere, meet anyone, and do anything, no matter how extreme. This is different from knowing something well. My story “Dreams of Love” is about a woman who tries to abandon her child. If I had a child or truly understood a mother’s feelings, I think it would have been harder to write that story. It’s important to hold on to that sense of not knowing. In his essay “On Writing,” Raymond Carver said that “writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block.” Although my interpretation might differ from his original intent, I feel that preserving a sense of “not knowing” is also a crucial quality for writing fiction.

You count Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, and John Cheever among your influences, which makes sense, given your realistic, minimalist style and your use of the “show, don’t tell” technique. However, I notice a Chekhovian quality in your work as well, especially in your exploration of psychological realism and subtext, combined with a kind of ironic humor that highlights the contradictions of the human experience. At times, your stories even verge on Kafkaesque. You’ve also shared that you’re influenced by various genres like mystery novels, American dramas, and science fiction. Do you consciously think of these techniques and influences as you write? How would you describe your own style or voice? 

Chekhov and Kafka! My goodness! As a writer, how could one not love Chekhov and Kafka? Their influence is almost impossible to avoid. For a long time, whenever I was asked to name my favorite short stories, I’d cite Kafka’s “The Judgment,” Hemingway’s “The Battler,” and Choi In-ho’s “The Drunkard.” These three works are very different from one another, but they have one thing in common: they don’t tell you everything that happens to the characters. They include gaps or things we don’t understand. I was drawn to this style because it felt like a true representation of life. Life is full of things we can’t understand, and we’re bound to fail when we try to explain them. For instance, when a tragic event occurs, and some people die while others survive, how are we to make sense of it? This is one of the themes in my debut work, “Blanket.” If fiction is to reflect life, I believe it must capture this sense of not knowing. I wanted to capture the gaps themselves. Early on, I did this by intentionally leaving things unsaid, but now I find myself trying to reveal the unknowability—the gaps—while saying more.

Is this why you’re drawn to the mystery genre, where gaps and unknowns often thrive? 

I think so. Fundamentally, I believe every fictional work is a detective story. This might be a bit of an exaggeration, but when readers dive into a story, they’re always curious about the choices the protagonist will make. It’s important to keep that sense of curiosity alive. Aside from this idea, I have an immense love for the mystery genre. As a child, I watched a lot of detective shows and read countless detective novels. I grew up on Agatha Christie and the Sherlock Holmes series. Later on, I became obsessed with writers like Raymond Chandler, William Irish, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald. I always wanted to write a mystery novel featuring a detective, so I was thrilled when I got the chance to write Children of the Lost Forest a few years ago.

Another similarity to Chekhov I see in your writing is how you create deep pathos while keeping a certain distance from your characters, as if viewing them through a telescope, revealing more from afar. Yet, you manage to evoke strong emotions in readers. How do you maintain emotional distance while ensuring your characters still resonate deeply with your audience?

I don’t know everything about my characters. When I think of a story or character, I try to write as if they’re real people in another world. As you mentioned, I imagine that I have a sort of telescope, observing their actions and simply recording what I see. Often, I don’t fully understand why they say or do certain things, which only deepens my interest. I find myself becoming more curious and I think about them even more. I really enjoy this feeling when I write. These feelings inspire me. “You can love without understanding.” I love this phrase. It captures how I feel when I write and how readers might feel when they enjoy my work.

John L’Heureux said, “To avoid melodrama, aim for a restrained tone rather than an exaggerated one … keep the language deflated and rooted in action and sensory detail. Don’t reach for dramatic language but for what’s implied.” You do this particularly well. How do you exercise such restraint and control in your writing, especially in emotionally charged scenes? What advice would you give to writers struggling with this issue?

Some readers criticize me for not expressing enough emotion in my writing. Or they think I portray it in strange ways. They might even be bewildered after finishing a story, wondering what exactly happened to the characters. When I use restraint in my stories, it’s not intentional. It’s just that there are many parts I feel I can’t fully explain. For instance, if I’m writing a scene where a wife loses her husband and bursts into tears, I can clearly describe the situation of losing her husband, but I can’t fully explain why she’s crying. I can say it’s because she’s sad, but that might not be entirely true. It’s a very complex emotion. She could be feeling guilt, emptiness, self-pity, and so on. Instead of explaining everything, I choose to show the scene. I stay silent about the parts I can’t fully understand and focus on what I can describe well. I believe this approach can reveal much more. Of course, some may choose to explain the complexity with words, but that’s not my method.

Themes of class disparity and the gap between the rich and poor, the privileged and disadvantaged, frequently appear in your work. I’m thinking about the young couple in “Blanket” who say that they’re “nothing,” calling themselves “human trash,” the blind man and his wife in “Downpour” who cite their “stupidity” as the reason why they can’t ever move up in the world and become happy, and also the nanny in “The Substitute Teacher.” What motivates you to explore these social issues and what message do you hope to convey?

My novel Dear Ralph Lauren is where I seriously tackled this theme. The protagonist, Jongsu, is studying in the U.S., but he recalls a girl he knew in high school. At that time, the brand Ralph Lauren was extremely popular in Seoul, and almost everyone had at least one Ralph Lauren item. But this girl came from a less affluent family and had to work part-time to afford it. This novel is based on my own experience. Some of my high school friends could easily buy shirts that cost over 200,000 won, while others wore their school uniforms all the time. I was somewhere in the middle. If I’d begged my parents, they might have bought it for me, but never willingly. Those school days left a strong impression on me. 

      Back then, we didn’t openly distinguish between friends based on financial disparities. Everyone got along well on the surface. But there were subtle emotions at play, like the sense of alienation between wealthy friends and those who struggled financially. Since I was neither rich nor poor, I might have been more sensitive to these nuances. As an adult, I realized that this sense of alienation could manifest in various forms—anger, lament, resignation, self-deception, malicious intent, hypocrisy, hatred, contempt, and so on. I’ve always wanted to write about the impact of money and wealth on people’s hearts. Maybe not in a direct way, but these concerns are a constant presence in my work.

Can you walk us through your creative process? How do you develop your story ideas, and what does a typical writing day look like for you? What inspires you and what do you do when you’re stuck?

In the past three or four years, my writing pattern has changed. I used to start my workday late, but these days I try to start by 9:00 a.m. at the latest. It would be better if I could start even earlier, but that hasn’t happened yet. I find it difficult to work at home, so I have a list of cafes where I can be productive. Cafes are usually empty and quiet early in the morning. I enjoy writing in that kind of atmosphere. My goal is to write two to three thousand characters every day. Then I come home by 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. and completely forget about my work, spending my time on personal errands or hobbies. When I’m not writing, I prefer to separate myself completely from my work.

      Honestly, I still don’t fully understand how the seeds of my books come to me. Sometimes certain scenes pop into my mind without any context. Recently, I had an image of a girl getting slapped on a snowy day. To make sure I don’t forget these ideas, I jot them down in the Notes app on my iPhone. Whenever I read an interesting article, see a compelling scene in a documentary, or come across a memorable passage in a book, I make note of it. When I start writing, I review these notes and use them to build my story.

      This process doesn’t always go smoothly. While my goal is to write more than two thousand characters a day, there are many days when I can’t meet that target. Sometimes writing feels too overwhelming. Still, I go out early every morning and try to reach my word count, even if it means writing sentences that I might delete the next day. By repeatedly writing and deleting, there comes a day when I don’t delete them anymore. So, when I face a daunting pro-ject, I tell myself: if I keep pushing through this overwhelming feeling, I’ll be able to write something one day.

As a professor at Kyung Hee University, how do you balance your teaching responsibilities with your writing career? What do you emphasize most to your students?

The class I teach at Kyung Hee University isn’t specif-ically about fiction writing. It’s called “Reflection and Expression,” and it’s a required liberal arts course. Students write about themselves, and they must take it to graduate. Most aren’t interested in writing, and after the semester, they probably won’t write again. But what I emphasize is that even if they don’t write, they should continue the activities essential to writing. Like paying attention to themselves and the things around them, observing what happens. By doing so, they can discover things they’d previously overlooked and develop feelings about them. This idea actually comes from the Raymond Carver essay I quoted earlier. He wrote, “At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.” I believe this applies not just to writers. Anyone who views the world this way will have a richer life, and the more people who do, the better our world will be.

I love that line. Raymond Carver talks about “gaping” or “paying attention” as being perhaps the most important quality of writing. It reminds me of the story “You Must Know Everything” by Isaac Babel and what the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said: “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.” Do you have any specific exercises or techniques you use to cultivate this attentive way of seeing in your students? How do you personally ensure that you stay observant and engaged with the world around you?

I encourage my students to make a list of things they like and don’t like. But I also tell them that discovering those things is difficult. To have genuine interests, you need to invest time. Simply saying, “Oh, I like this” or “I really hate this” isn’t genuine. We should focus on things that evoke “strange” feelings in us—emotions we can’t easily explain. When certain scenes or sentences stay with you, it’s worth questioning why that is. Why does this linger in my mind? I believe these kinds of questions help you discover who you are. They help you realize what kind of lens you use to see the world. Once you understand your “lens” better, you can either deepen that perspective or change it.

      The important thing is not to wait for texts that move you to come along but to actively seek them out yourself. Read, watch, and listen, and if something stays with you, question it. This is what I call “reading.” The text can be anything. Ultimately, I believe your own life should become the subject of your reading. Everything you encounter can be something to read.

You’ve received numerous literary awards throughout your career, including winning the Young Writer Award four years in a row from 2012 to 2015, as well as the prestigious Daesan Literary Award and most recently the Yi Sang Literary Award. While it’s not all about the awards, how has this recognition impacted you and your approach to storytelling?

Winning awards is always a thrill. Of course, I’m grateful, and I often think I’ve just been lucky. Debuting as a writer, publishing several books, and receiving various awards. . . 
I try to see it all as luck. I try not to put too much stock in them. Maybe it’s because I’m easily swayed by such things. If I’m not careful, they might influence me too much! So, I put extra effort into thinking that they mean nothing. I always aim for balance. You know that famous saying by Isak Dinesen? “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” That’s what I strive to do.

What books are on your nightstand right now? 
Are there any films or works of art that are currently inspiring you?

I haven’t been able to read as much lately, but I’ve started a book called The Divided Self by Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing. Published in 1960, it’s a study on schizophrenia where Laing argues that instead of merely categorizing schizophrenic patients by their symptoms, we need to understand how they perceive the world. Only by approaching them in this way can we effectively treat them. This reminds me of what the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks advocated in Awakenings. He insisted that we need to listen to the stories of Parkinson’s patients. He said, “We must come down from our position as ‘objective observers,’ and meet our patients face-to-face; we must meet them in a sympathetic and imaginative encounter. . . they can tell us, but nobody else can.”

      Of course, we can never fully understand how patients with schizophrenia or Parkinson’s disease perceive the world. Some aspects will forever remain beyond our grasp. Even so, we must never stop trying to look into their reality and listen to their stories. I believe this is a mindset a writer should have. There are gaps in this world that we cannot understand. We may never be able to explain them fully. Even so, we shouldn’t stop trying. As discussed earlier, we shouldn’t avert our eyes. That’s how I feel. I want to keep writing fiction that includes these gaps.

Translated by Janet Hong

     KOREAN WORKS MENTIONED:

• Son Bo-mi, “Bringing Them the Lindy Hop,” “Blanket,” and “Downpour” 

from Bringing Them the Lindy Hop (Munhakdongne, 2013)

     손보미, 「그들에게 린디합을」, 「담요」, 「폭우」, 『그들에게 린디합을』 (문학동네, 2013)

• Son Bo-mi, “Dreams of Love” from Dreams of Love (Munhakdongne, 2023)

     손보미, 「사랑의 꿈」, 『사랑의 꿈』 (문학동네, 2023)

• Son Bo-mi, “The Cat Thief” from The Fireflies of Manhattan (Maeum Sanchaek, 2019)

     손보미, 「고양이 도둑」, 『맨해튼의 반딧불이』 (마음산책, 2019)

• Son Bo-mi, Dear Ralph Lauren (Munhakdongne, 2017)

     손보미, 『디어 랄프 로렌』 (문학동네, 2017)

• Son Bo-mi, Children of the Lost Forest (Anon Books, 2022)

     손보미, 『사라진 숲의 아이들』 (안온북스, 2022)

• Son Bo-mi, “The Substitute Teacher” from Cats and the Elegant Night (Moonji Publishing, 2018)

     손보미, 「임시교사」, 『우아한 밤과 고양이들』 (문학과지성사, 2018)

Son Bo-mi began her literary career by winning the 21st Century Literature New Writer’s Prize in 2009 and the Dong-A Ilbo Literary Contest in 2011. Her works include the short story collections Bringing Them the Lindy Hop, Cats and the Elegant Night, Dreams of Love, and The Fireflies of Manhattan; the novella The God of Coincidence; the novels Dear Ralph Lauren, Little Village, and Children of the Lost Forest; and the essay collection Anyway, American TV Shows. She has received numerous awards, including the Munhakdongne Young Writer Award, the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Kim Jun-seong Literary Award, the Daesan Literary Award, the Yi Sang Literary Award, and the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award.

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the TA First Translation Prize and the LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale. She’s a two-time winner of the Harvey Award for Best International Book for her translations of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass and Yeong-shin Ma’s Moms. She is currently a mentor for ALTA’s Emerging Translator Mentorship Program.