About the Speakers

Brooklyn born, Queens raised and educated at C.W. Post College,Adrienne Leslie fully expected her life to take her no further than the outskirts of New York. Then in 2003, when teaching, Ms. Leslie was named NY Educational envoy to The Republic of Korea. The trip changed everything. The world was bigger than she thought and more interesting than she imagined. She left teaching and through a grant, published her first novel in 2005. Bird and Fish became a sensation among non-Asian women as well as Korean-Americans. It was followed by her sequel, Sea and Sky.

Adrienne soon found herself lecturing on all things Korean-American on Korean television, including a cooking show and an English-speaking weekly spot on Radio Korea. An opportunity at The New York Daily News Impact Panel led to her weekly views of living on a budget in the most expensive city in the world. Her pieces received the most buzz during the impact panel’s reign.

For her tireless work in the Korean-American community, she has been recognized by KAAGNY, NYKAPA and KAYA and presently sits on the board of the Korean-American Scholarship Foundation where she is donor to the Adrienne Leslie Scholarship Award.

Adrienne lives in her Queens’ home with her husband, Jim, and dog, Fido, where she writes her blog, One More Thing Before I Go.

Patricia Park was born and raised in Queens and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. She received her BA in English literature from Swarthmore College and her MFA in fiction from Boston University, where she studied with Ha Jin and Allegra Goodman. She has taught writing at Boston University, Ewha Womans University Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation, and CUNY Queens College. She was a Fulbright scholar to South Korea, an Emerging Writers fellow with The Center for Fiction, and a Fellow with the American Association of University Women.

Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, Slice Magazine, and others.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About the Books

From the Publishers

ALICE AGAIN by Adrienne Leslie is a contemporary retelling of Alice in Wonderland, where, in the summer of 2009, Alice Pleasance, mother of a fallen 9-11 police officer, makes a surprising birthday wish for a dreamy dark-eyed young man to notice her just one more time in her life.  It’s all in fun while she blows out the candles and returns home with her gifts including an insomnia cure from a Korean herb shop.

Later, Alice awakens years younger and racing to prevent her son Luke from going to the Towers only to find she has not gone back in time but has arrived in an alternate New York City under a vibrant red sky.

Alice’s nocturnal travels quickly fill with new friendships and involvements that force her to face her husband’s involvement in her travels. Red Sky may have started as an innocent time-out from tending to her surviving son, but it’s is getting harder to leave since young dark-eyed Hoon Park has asked her to stay.

It may only take one lifetime to grow older but you may need two to grow up.

RE JANE by Patricia Park is a fresh, contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre and a poignant Korean-American debut novel that takes its heroine Jane Re on a journey from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul—and back.

For Jane, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, Flushing, Queens, is the place she’s been trying to escape from her whole life. Sardonic yet vulnerable, she toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and politely observes the traditional principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic food co-ops, and nineteenth-century novels, Jane is the recipient of Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures and Ed Farley’s very male attention. But when a family death interrupts Jane and Ed’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind.

Reconnecting with family, and struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Jane begins to wonder if Ed Farley is really the man for her. Jane returns to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.

About the Moderator

Born and raised in South Korea, Peter Boklim Choi completed his undergraduate studies at Yonsei University in Seoul and got a master’s degree in communication from the City University of New York. He has worked as a reporter and writer in the United States and Korea for more than 20 years. He has published two books of poetry and two novels in Korean. His recent book, The Mountain Rats is his short story collection in English. Choi lives in Port Washington, New York, with his wife, and has three daughters.