The Center for Fiction Presents Gina Chung on Green Frog with Melissa Rivero

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT March 12, 2024

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

green frog gina chung

We are thrilled to welcome back two alumni of The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship—Gina Chung and Melissa Rivero—to celebrate their remarkable new publications. Chung’s collection, Green Frog, explores Korean American womanhood, bodies, animals, and transformation as a means of survival. The stories are equal parts fantastical and true to life, featuring talking dolls, fox demons, and the complexity of parent-child relationships. Rivero’s Flores and Miss Paula is a wry, tender novel about a Peruvian immigrant mother and a millennial daughter who have one final chance to find common ground after they learn they will be forced to move from their shared Brooklyn apartment. Chung and Rivero will return to The Center for Fiction for a captivating discussion about their stories of love, loss, family, and belonging. After the conversation, Chung and Rivero will sign books.

green frog gina chung

In Conversation

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    Gina Chung

    Gina Chung

    Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the short-story collection Green Frog and the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 alumna of The Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School.

  • Melissa Rivero Headshot (Aug 2023) Large

    Melissa Rivero

    Melissa Rivero

    Melissa Rivero is the author of The Affairs of the Falcóns, which won the 2019 New American Voices Award and a 2020 International Latino Book Award. The book was also longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her most recent novel, Flores and Miss Paula, was published in December 2023. Born in Lima, Peru and raised in Brooklyn, she is a graduate of NYU and Brooklyn Law School, where she was an editor of the Brooklyn Law Review. Melissa still lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Featured Books

  1. . 
    green frog gina chung

    Green Frog

    By Gina Chung

    Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

    PURCHASE

    Equal parts fantastical—a pair of talking dolls help twins escape a stifling home, a heart boils on the stove as part of an elaborate cure for melancholy, a fox demon contemplates avenging her sister’s death—and true to life—a mother and daughter try to heal their rift when the daughter falls unexpectedly pregnant, a woman reexamines her father’s legacy after his death—the stories in this collection are hopeful and heartbreaking, full of danger and full of joy.

    Chung is a master at capturing emotion, and her characters—human and otherwise—will claw their way into your heart and make themselves at home.

  2. . 
    rivero-melissa.flores-and-miss-paula

    Flores and Miss Paula

    By Melissa Rivero

    Published by HarperCollins

    PURCHASE

    Thirtysomething Flores and her mother, Paula, still live in the same Brooklyn apartment, but that may be the only thing they have in common. It’s been nearly three years since they lost beloved husband and father Martín, who had always been the bridge between them. One day, cleaning beneath his urn, Flores discovers a note written in her mother’s handwriting: Perdóname si te falle. Recuerda que siempre te quise. (“Forgive me if I failed you. Remember that I always loved you.”) But what would Paula need forgiveness for?

    Now newfound doubts and old memories come flooding in, complicating each woman’s efforts to carve out a good life for herself—and to support the other in the same. Paula thinks Flores should spend her evenings meeting a future husband, not crunching numbers for a floundering aquarium startup. Flores wishes Paula would ask for a raise at her DollaBills retail job, or at least find a best friend who isn’t a married man.

    When Flores and Paula learn they will be forced to move, they must finally confront their complicated past—and decide whether they share the same dreams for the future. Spirited and warm-hearted, Melissa Rivero’s new novel showcases the complexities of the mother-daughter bond with fresh insight and empathy.

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