Susan Choi
Literature
Spring 2024
Novelist and Professor of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University – United States – Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation Bogliasco Special Fellow in Literature
Susan Choi is the author of five novels, including Trust Exercise, which received the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction. She has also been the recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award, a Lamba Literary award, the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She serves as a trustee of PEN America.
Susan Choi's project will explore the life and legacy of her paternal grandfather, Ch’oe Chaeso, a Korean public intellectual of the 1930s and 40s. His prominence coincided with the period of Japanese colonial oppression of Korea, and his downfall, when Japanese dominion came to an end, left him a cultural pariah. Yet he has remained visible in Korea’s 20th century intellectual history, not despite but because of his reputation as a collaborator.