Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Park joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his debut short story collection, An Oral History of Atlantis. Park talks about writing the stories in the book over a period of about 25 years, during which he was frequently asked to read in New York and crafted work for specific venues, audiences, and events. He explains how this led to a wide-ranging and ultimately linked set of pieces in a variety of first-person voices. He considers why the short story form invites him to a greater degree of experimentation, to lean more heavily on humor, and to draft more quickly even as he took longer to assemble the whole volume. Park reads from “The Gift,” one of the stories in the collection.

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This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Ed Park

An Oral History of Atlantis

Same Bed Different Dreams

Personal Days

Weird Menace

Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 7, Episode 17: Ed Park on Korea’s Past, Real and Imagined

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño 

Seven Men by Max Beerbohm

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