Krys Lee

Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the recent novel How I Became a North Korean. Drifting House won the Story Prize Spotlight award and won honors awarded by the BBC International Story Prize and the Asian/Pacific American Libraries Association. New York Times says How I Became a North Korean “eloquently draws attention to issues of displacement, loss and identity”; the Miami Herald, “intense and unforgettable”; and San Francisco Chronicle, “an urgent work.” How I Became a North Korean is inspired by her accidental activism and friendships with North Korean defectors. The time she spent setting up a safe house in China ignited her outrage at missionaries who abuse power and fueled her desire to pay homage to survivors. When she's not writing, she reads, kayaks, camps, and tries to do a little bit of good wherever she is. A recipient of the Rome Prize, she lives in Seoul, South Korea, with intervals visiting her sister in the San Francisco Bay Area.