Public | Feb, 23 2022 7:00PM - 8:00PM
This year, we are honored to be joined by award-winning author Chang-rae Lee in conversation with Texas Book Festival Director Lois Kim.
The program will premiere at 7:00 p.m. CST on Wednesday, February 23. A link to view will be emailed to registrants earlier that day. We will not be taking comments or questions live— please submit your questions in advance, as part of the registration process, to help streamline the program. We welcome your comments on our Facebook and YouTube channels.
This program is presented in partnership with the Texas Book Festival.
About the speakers
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, as well as My Year Abroad, On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.
Lois Kim serves as Texas Book Festival’s chief executive, responsible for managing staff, programs, operations, external relations, and resource development. An immigrant from Seoul, Korea, she holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining the Book Festival, Kim served as the associate director of University Extension at UT Austin, where she managed student and academic affairs for college credit students.
About the book
My Year Abroad (2021) is an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure. Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
In the breathtaking, “precise, elliptical prose” that Chang-rae Lee is known for (The New York Times), the narrative alternates between Tiller’s mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs. Tinged at once with humor and darkness, electric with its accumulating surprises and suspense, My Year Abroad is a novel that only Chang-rae Lee could have written, and one that will be read and discussed for years to come.
Book sales
Signed, bookplated paperback copies of My Year Abroad are available for order from The Store at LBJ. By purchasing your book through The Store at LBJ, you support a local cultural institution. All proceeds from sales support our programming, exhibits, and educational initiatives at the LBJ Presidential Library.
About the Harry Middleton Lectureship
Lady Bird Johnson established the Harry Middleton Lectureship in 1994 to honor the career, loyalty and legacy of Mr. Middleton, who served in the Johnson administration and as Director of the LBJ Library for 30 years. The lectureship was designed to attract and enrich the learning experiences of UT students and the Austin community. Speakers include former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Jimmy Carter, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Tom Brokaw, actor Bryan Cranston, playwright Robert Schenkkan, and playwright and film director David Mamet. The lecture series is co-sponsored by the LBJ Presidential Library and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation.
