Crystal Hana Kim is the author of The Stone Home (April 2024) and If You Leave Me (2018), which was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. She is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, nominated by Min Jin Lee. She is also a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Guernica, ELLE, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Apogee Journal and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.
“Debut” holds the ring of promise, where disappointment feels intrinsic to the word “sophomore.” For better or worse, people love to call second books “sophomore” novels, with all its accompanying connotations.