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About An Authentic Life

Sprawling yet urgent, meditative yet lucid, the poems in Jennifer Chang’s anticipated third collection, An Authentic Life, offer a bold examination of a world deeply influenced by war and patriarchy. In dialogues against literature, against philosophy, and against God, Chang interrogates the “fathers” who stand at the center of history. Poems navigate wounds opened by explorations of family and generational trauma, and draw on the author’s experiences as a mother, as the daughter of immigrants, and as a citizen of our deeply divided nation. 

About The Sisters K

After years of estrangement, Minah, Sarah, and Esther have been forced together again. Called to their father's deathbed, the sisters must confront a man little changed by the fact of his mortality. Vicious and pathetic in equal measure, Eugene Kim wants one thing: to see which of his children will abject themselves for his favor-- and more importantly, his fortune. From their childhood in California to the depths of a mid-Atlantic winter, the solitary sisters Kim must face a brutal past colliding with their present. Grasping at their broken bonds of sisterhood, they will do what is necessary to escape the tragedy of their circumstances--whatever the cost.

For Minah, the eldest, the money would be recompense for their father's cruelty. A practicing lawyer with an icy pragmatism, she dreams of a family of her own and sets to work on securing her inheritance. For Sarah, a gifted and embittered academic who wields her intelligence like a weapon, confronting her father again forces her to reckon with the desperation of her present life. It is left to the youngest-- directionless and loving Esther-- to care for their father in her lonely quest to do right by everyone. A fortune pales in comparison to the prospect of finally reuniting with her sisters.

With a legacy of violence haunting their lives, the sisters dare to imagine a better future even as their father's poison courses through their blood. A contemporary reimagining of Dostoevsky's dark classic, The Brothers Karamazov, Maureen Sun's brilliant debut is a vivid and visceral exploration of rage, shame, and the betrayals of intimacy.

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark, which received the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including American Poetry Review, The Believer, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Yale Review and has been honored with fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency and with the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine. She is the poetry editor of New England Review and teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars and the University of Texas in Austin. Her most recent book, An Authentic Life, was published by Copper Canyon Press in October. 

Maureen Sun teaches at Yale. She is at work on a second novel titled Desert View.