Readings: New Fiction

Angie Kim attended Stanford University and Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, then practiced as a trial lawyer at Williams & Connolly. Her stories have won the Glamour Essay Contest and the Wabash Prize in Fiction, and appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Southern Review, Sycamore Review, The Asian American Literary Review, and PANK. Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton Books) is her debut novel. The Washington Post writes, “A stunning debut about parents, children and the unwavering hope of a better life, even when all hope seems lost" In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe? . Recommended by Erin Morgenstern, Jean Kwok, Jennifer Weiner, Scott Turow, Laura Lippman, and more-- Miracle Creek is a brave, moving debut from an unforgettable new voice.

Lara Prescott received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. She won the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for the first chapter of The Secrets We Kept. Her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, and other publications. Inspired by a true story, Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept (Knopf) tells a thrilling tale of two secretaries turned spies. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dares publish it, and help Boris Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. The Secrets We Kept combines the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara, with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. New York Times Bestselling author Kate Quinn called The Secrets We Kept “simply sensational. […] From the gulags of the USSR to the cherry blossom trees of Washington DC, the story grips and refuses to let go. Lara Prescott is a star in the making."