About
Nami Mun
Nami Mun was raised in South Korea and New York. She’s the author of the bestselling novel Miles from Nowhere, which received a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. Miles was an Indie Next Pick, Booklist’s Editor’s Choice, and Amazon’s Best Fiction of 2009 So Far. Her work has been supported by the US Department of State, Illinois Arts Council, Northwestern University, Bread Loaf, Tin House, Ragdale Foundation, Yaddo, and MacDowell, who awarded her a James Baldwin/Hearst Foundation Fellowship. Her writings can be found in Granta, The Yale Review, Tin House, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The Iowa Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, among others. Her first creative nonfiction piece can be found in The Atlantic. The Vessel, her second novel, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books/MacMillan in 2027.
Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. After earning a GED, she went on to get a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA from University of Michigan. She’s now a professor of creative writing and literature in Chicago.
“Nami Mun is easily one of the most important new talents in American fiction. The first time I read her work, I thought two things: one, that I knew these characters, people I’d always seen but had never heard from, stories I always knew were there but that until now hadn’t been told. And two: that I was in the presence of one of our next great writers. American fiction is a little larger in a way that really matters, now that she’s here.”
– Alexander Chee
“In this novel set in the 1980s, homeless teen Joon leaves her troubled family to suffer the scams, violence, and sudden friendships of street life in New York City. Suspenseful, funny, painful, and poetic, Nami Mun’s debut shows a talent for close observation and a prose which fills the grit of street life with flashes of gold.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Dum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient. Sed haec quis possit intrepidus aestimare tellus. Ab illo tempore, ab est sed immemorabili.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Stunning. The visceral power of Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere sneaks up on you—whatever heartache or humor you find within these pages is embodied in her shimmering prose, distilled to the bone. I found myself reading passages out loud to friends, passages I thought were hallucinatory and funny, only to find myself choking back real tears.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
Spare, unsentimental…and fresh.
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Me non paenitet nullum festiviorem excogitasse ad hoc. Qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Me non paenitet nullum festiviorem excogitasse ad hoc. Qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“A starkly beautiful book, shot through with grace and lit by an off-hand street poetry. Nami Mun takes a cast of junkies and runaways and brings them fiercely and frankly to life. It’s a measure of the artistry of the work that even in their grimmest, darkest moments, rather than being repelled by these characters, we want to stay beside them, as if to care for them, or at least to bear witness to their lives.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Radical and admirable…”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic
“Cras mattis iudicium purus sit amet fermentum. Unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam. Morbi fringilla convallis sapien, id pulvinar odio volutpat.”
– Reviewer Name, The Atlantic