“The shimmering, lucid tones and silver melancholy of I'll Be Right There give readers a South Korea peopled with citizens fighting for honor and intellectual freedom, and longing for love and solace. Kyung-Sook Shin's characters have unforgettable voices-it's no wonder she has so many fans.” GivingCharacterFightingVoiceWonderFansReaderCitizensHonorIntellectualLongingSouthToneSilverMelancholyKoreaSolaceUnforgettableSouth KoreaIntellectual Freedom Author:Susan Straight
“Southern writing is regional: it includes dialect, settings, and cultural traditions from that region. However the themes and story conflicts are universal. My challenge is to write regional fiction without falling into the trap of nostalgia. There are important issues facing the south that I believe should be raised in the stories to make them contemporary, believable, and relevant to today's readers.” ShouldWritingBelieveImportantStoriesTodayFallI BelieveChallengesFictionIssuesReaderConflictTraditionUniversalSouthRaisedNostalgiaSettingContemporarySettingsThemeRegionsSouthernRelevantTrapsBelievableDialectImportant Issues Author:Mary Alice Monroe
“When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” WritingLooksStillsAbleCoursesFoundDealsFictionQualityCasesModernSeriousReaderSouthRealisticSouthernFreakGrotesque Author:Flannery O'Connor
“Speaking as an outsider is the most authentic voice for a poet. Poets who have one hundred thousand or one million readers [as many South Korean poets do] might not be a real, authentic poet.” RealMightVoiceMillionsPoetReaderThousandHundredSouthOutsidersKorean Author:Kim Hyesoon