The following event description is adapted from the Gramercy Books website. The event image was originally published on the Gramercy Books website.
Join Kenyon College creative writing professor and author Ira Sukrungruang in conversation with noted memoirist, novelist, and Ohio State University creative writing professor Lee Martin about Ira’s latest memoir, This Jade World.
Registration for this in-store event is on Eventbrite. Admission is free, and attendees can purchase the book when registering. Registration closes at 6:00 pm on the day of the event.
To ensure safety for all, proof of full vaccination or a recent negative Covid-19 test is required to attend. Masks are mandated by the City of Bexley, even for those unvaccinated. Seating is limited.
The Ohio State University Creative Writing Program and Ohioana Library are Gramercy’s Community Partners for this program.
This Jade World centers on a Thai American who has gone through a series of life changes. Ira Sukrungruang married young to an older poet. On their twelfth anniversary, he received a letter asking for a divorce, sending him into a despairing spiral. How would he define himself when he was suddenly without the person who shaped and helped mold him into the person he is?
After all these years, he asked himself what he wanted and found no answer. He did not even know what wanting meant. And so, in the year between his annual visits to Thailand to see his family, he gave in to urges, both physical and emotional; found comfort in the body, many bodies; fought off the impulse to disappear, to vanish; until he arrived at some modicum of understanding. During this time, he sought to obliterate the stereotype of the sexless Asian man and began to imagine a new life with new possibilities.
Through ancient temples and the lush greenery of Thailand, to the confines of a stranger's bed and a devouring couch, This Jade World chronicles a year of mishap, exploration and experimentation, self-discovery, and eventually, healing. It questions the very nature of love and heartbreak, uncovering the vulnerability of being human.
Ira Sukrungruang is the author of five books, including Buddha's Dog & Other Meditations, Southside Buddhist, an American Book Award winner, and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy. He is the president of Sweet: A Literary Confection (sweetlit.com) and is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.
Lee Martin’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Creative Nonfiction, and The Best American Essays and he is the author of the May 2021 memoir, Gone The Hard Road. His novels include The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, along with Yours, Jean; The Mutual UFO Network; and Late One Night. Lee is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching from The Ohio State University, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he is a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor.
