Sonya Chung’s stories, review, & essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Crab Orchard Review, Sonora Review, and BOMB Magazine, among others. She is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, and the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Fellowship & Residency. She contributes regularly to the literary blog The Millions and teaches fiction writing at New York University and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Long for This World is her first novel.
Sonya was born in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy, Columbia University, and the University of Washington.
Photo Credit: Robin Holland
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Dear Sonya,
I just read your opinion about Lit vs. Genre fiction from your article that included Sherman Alexie’s quote about being taken for Goliath instead of David. I wanted to tell you that recently I’ve also noticed, with dismay, that many of the “Moms” on the school blacktop have stooped to reading the vampire books for teenage girls. It makes me want to divorce my girlfriends. Still, on Victoria Lautman’s Writers on the Record (on Chicago Public Radio) I’ve heard a few authors talking about their guilty pleasures of reading genre fiction and how they intend to break out of conventional writing and perhaps blend their writing. I’m not positive, but I think the writers I’ve heard mention this include Michael Cunningam, Jonathan Safran Foer (who loves Joseph Cornell and his abilities to create a message succinctly through art), and even Junot Diaz who embraces language in a clearly no-snobby way. These guys made me smile, because they wanted to break convention. JSF even said that some bad books have a place so that good ones can be written. We’ll see what they can come up with – and how book publishers will market them. Thank you for your convictions. Today, especially in the book publishing world, it’s hard to stand on strong literary legs.