Joseph Han is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing and the author of Nuclear Family, named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a best book of the year by NPR and Time Magazine. He was selected as a 2022 National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ honoree and received a Kundiman fellowship in fiction. His novel won the 2023 Asian/Pacific American Literature Award Adult Fiction Honor and the 2024 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. It was also long listed for the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and short-listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. He has given talks and readings at UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, the A/P/A Institute at New York University, UC Riverside, the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, University of Nevada-Reno, and Arizona State University.
His writing has recently appeared in Gulf Coast, The Sun Magazine, The Rumpus, New York Times Magazine, and Lit Hub. In 2023, he received the Elliot Cades Award for Literature for Emerging Artist from the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council. Formerly an editor for the West region of Joyland Magazine, he taught as Affiliate Faculty in Fiction at the Antioch University Los Angeles low-residency MFA program, and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is working on his next novel.
Publications
Books
Nuclear Family: A Novel. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2022.
- Korean translation: 핵가족 (Seoul: Wisdom House, 2023), trans. Jisun Park.
Sample Short Fiction
- “Ultrazone,” Gulf Coast, 31.6 Summer/Fall 2023, https://gulfcoastmag.org/online/36.1-summer/fall-2023/ultrazone/
- “Please Be Patient Student Driver,” The Sun Magazine, September 2023, https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/573/please-be-patient-student-driver.
- “Slime,” The Rumpus, May 2023, https://therumpus.net/2023/05/08/rumpus-original-fiction-slime/
- “Returns,” Nat. Brut, November 2020, https://www.natbrut.com/joseph-han.
- “Hyung,” Catapult, September 2020, https://catapult.co/stories/joseph-han-fiction-short-story-hyung.
- “Fare,” Joyland Magazine, July 2018. https://joylandmagazine.com/uncategorized/fare/.
- “Terms and Conditions for Meeting My Korean Parents at Their Place for Dinner,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, June 2018, https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/terms-and-conditions-for-meeting-my-korean-parents-at-their-place-for-dinner.
- “Crimes Against Growth,” Little Fiction, May 2018, http://littlefiction.com/beta/JosephHan_CrimesAgainstGrowth.html.
Sample Non-Fiction
- “Making Peace with Our Ghosts.” New York Times Magazine, Summer 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/magazine/jesa-ancestors-korea-ghosts.html.
- “Finding a Place on Hawaiʻi’s Plate Lunch.” Lit Hub, Summer 2022, https://lithub.com/making-meat-jun-facing-history-flattening-korean-tradition-in-hawai%ca%bbi/.
- “North Korea, Sirens and a Policy of Fear.” Honolulu Civil Beat, December 2017, https://www.civilbeat.org/2017/12/north-korea-sirens-and-a-policy-of-fear/.
Areas of Interest
Creative Writing, Novel writing, the Short Story Collection, Short Form Writing, Hybrid & Experimental forms, Literatures of Hawaiʻi, Asian American Literature, Speculative fiction, Surrealism, Fiction-to-Film Adaptations, Non-fiction
Awards
|
2024
2023
2022 2020 |
Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Book Award – Creative Writing: Prose (Outstanding Achievement) Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Emerging Writer VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Shortlist PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, Longlist Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, Adult Fiction Honor National Book Foundation, ‘5 Under 35’ Honoree Kundiman Fellowship in Fiction |
Education
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., English & Creative Writing, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Courses
Spring Semester 2025
- ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
- ENG-414: Fiction Workshop
Fall Semester 2024
- ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
- ENG-713: Seminar in Creative Writing
Spring Semester 2023
- ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
- ENG-416: Studies: Creative Writing