Frances Park — AHN LOVE - with Sean Collins — at Union Market

A dreamy, poignant romp, Ahn Love opens with Margaret visiting her widowed father, Sam Ahn, on his ninetieth birthday. His crippling loneliness—anchored in the belief that if his orchids ever bloom, his late wife will return—transports Margaret back to the summer of 1969 and the Ahns’ seven-day cruise across the Pacific.On that fateful voyage, a teenage Margaret—nicknamed Monkey—witnessed the unraveling of her family: her beloved but servile Uncle Bong’s betrayal, her mother’s fateful encounter with a Brazilian playboy, and the first stirrings of her own awakening. Amid the glittering decks and restless seas, Margaret experiences the dizzying highs and crushing lows of youth—magic, tragic, exotic, and erotic—all new to her, including a brief but intoxicating romance with the dashing Adam Kang, a young Korean Brit.As memory and present entwine, Ahn Love becomes a tender meditation on desire, loss, and the fragile beauty of time—where the seeds of love and heartbreak are sown in equal measure.Frances Park is a Korean American author of novels and memoirs published around the world. Her books have been praised by The Straits Times, The Washington Post, The Korea Times, USA Today, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Times, The Korean Quarterly, The Taipei Times, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, CNN, Newsweek, and Good Morning America.Her stories reflect an identity shaped by two worlds. In her novel Blue Rice, a Korean woman who survived the war must adjust to 1960s white America while confronting the pain of her husband’s desertion. Her poignant novel The Summer My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon explores the spiritual dislocation of two Korean American sisters growing up in Washington, DC suburbia in the 1970s. Her memoir-in-essays That Lonely Spell was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a fresh take on the Korean American memoir by a writer from a generation whose voice has seldom been heard.”Frances’s award-winning short stories and essays have appeared in over fifty literary magazines, including O, The Oprah Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Columbia Journal, The London Magazine, Arts & Letters, The Bellevue Literary Review, and The Chicago Quarterly. The loss of her father at a young age haunts much of her writing. In Ahn Love, she imagines him as he might have been had he lived to the age of ninety. Frances lives outside Washington, DC. Visit her at parksisters.com.Park will be joined in conversation with Sean Collins, a writer and photographer, as well as an editor at The Washington Post where he covers politics. Currently at work on his first novel, his work has been published in Vox, The Chromatic Watch, and Blavity. His photography has been exhibited in the UK and US and can be viewed at seanpagecollins.com. Originally from Chicago, he lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter. This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.