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When an author reads an excerpt of a forthcoming book, you’d expect them to want everyone in the audience to go home wanting a copy. But R.O. Kwon doesn’t need a couple people who came to hear her speak at this year’s Vulture Fest to read her sophomore novel: namely, her parents. “I invited them to this, but trust me, Eomma and Appa [Mom and Dad] … please don’t read the rest of this book,” Kwon said with a laugh. “For the rest of y’all, Exhibit will be out in May.” What can we expect from the follow-up to The Incendiaries? Well, Kwon said it’s gonna be “full of sex,” so that might explain her warning to parents. But she added that it also explores desires related to bodies, ambition, “queer exuberance,” religion, kink, and origin stories. It follows a photographer named Jin and an injured ballerina named Lidija (who picked that stage name for herself when she was 5 years old).
Kwon took the stage for about seven minutes to read a preview, which started with an old tale of a double-suicide that might have caused a family curse and ended with an encounter between Jin and Lidija. According to Kwon, Exhibit is the result of a “hellbent” attempt to explore why she feels pushed by the world to want certain things, but not others. “Things I feel pressured not to want, to hide my appetite for include: sex, food, artistic ambition, any ambition at all, a day alone,” she explained, prompting a few audience chuckles and snaps. “In other words, anything for myself.” With Exhibit, we get to see what happens if Jin and Lidija are “able to run full tilt after what they desire.”
This reading was part of a panel celebrating Feminist as F*ck, the literary series co-created and co-curated by Amber Tamblyn and Roxane Gay. After walking out on stage to “Bad Girls” by M.I.A. and doing a deep-breath exercise led by Tamblyn, the writers featured in the Saturday event — including Kwon, Tamblyn, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Kirsten Vangsness, and Gabrielle Bellot — each took a turn at the mic to read their work. Even after Kwon’s turn was done, she still came up in conversation in the form of writing advice. Thompson-Spires read part of an upcoming novel about a “really abusive man” with four wives, and recalled telling Kwon that she wanted to kill the character five different ways. Kwon responded by asking her why she didn’t just… do that. “Each chapter is one of his five deaths now, so thank you for that,” Thompson-Spires said.
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