Jung Yun Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Jung Yun is a published author who was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota.

The writer has studied at Vassar College, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she was able to get her MFA in creative writing.

The work that she has done has been featured in publications such as The Massachusetts Review, Tin House, The Indiana Review, The Massachusetts Review, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and others.

Jung has received many different individual artist’s grants in fiction from places like the Maryland State Arts Council, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. She has also gotten different residential fellowships from MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ucross Foundation, Art Omi, and the National Humanities Center.

She is married and resides in Baltimore along with her husband. Jung Yun is also an associate professor of English at the George Washington University. She is part of the board of directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is also a fiction juror for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Yun’s book Shelter has been picked to shine in the spotlight by a variety of publications and places. It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, a selection for the Amazon Best Book of the Month in two different categories, an Indie Next selection, a Goodreads Best Book of the Month pick, and an Apple iBooks’ Best Books of the Month pick. The book was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a semi-finalist for Goodreads’ Best Fiction Book of 2016. It also ended up being a finalist for the 2016 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program.

O Beautiful is a 2021 novel by Jung Yun. It is a New York Times and Amazon Editor’s Choice. If you have been keeping an eye out for a new book that makes an impact on you, this could be the one. This is the portrait of a woman who is doing what she can to try and come to terms with ghosts from the past and the realities of an America that is deeply divided.

Elinor Hanson is a former model who at forty years old is trying to reinvent her career and establish herself as a freelance writer. When she gets an unexpected assignment, everything is about to change. Her mentor from grad school gives her the chance to write for a prestigious magazine about North Dakota’s Bakken oil boom.

Elinor was someone who grew up close to the Bakken. She grew up with a father who was totally overbearing and a Korean mother who was distant. The two of them met and got married when he was stationed overseas. Elinor has been away from home for decades and comes back to a landscape that she barely recognizes that has been overrun by tens of thousands of new people.

Elinor is surrounded by roughnecks who are out to make their fortune in oil and she also has around her some long term residents who have been there for a long time who are worried about the changes that are happening in their community. Through this, she experiences a lot of alienation and grief. She rages at the male gaze, at the locals who consider her a foreigner, and the memories that she has of her family being estranged after her mother chose to get out of her unhappy marriage and leaves Elinor and her sister behind.

The more that she goes after this assignment that could change her career, the more that her past weaves in with the story that she is attempting to tell. This will show strange new realities that are going to change her and maybe even the way that she views the world forever. Full of graceful prose, this novel shows a picture of a community that is full of competing interests and tensions while one woman tries to reconcile the anger that she has with her love for a land that is troubled but beautiful. Read this book to find out what happens in the end!

All the World Can Hold is a 2026 novel by Jung Yun. If you have been on the lookout for a new story to read that is dramatic but also interesting, this could be the book for you!

Three different passengers who come from different backgrounds get on a cruise ship not long after 9/11 happened. They are about to find out that when it comes to the risks that are not taken, they are unable to outrun the regrets that they have.

It is Sunday and the date is September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have decided to trade in their Park Avenue co-op in order to get a suite on board the Sonata. The Sonata is a former cruise ship who used to be in its glory with a complicated history who has now gone long past its prime.

Even though they feel that they are not cruise people, Franny wants to host the trip as they’ve planned it mainly due to the fact that it is her mother’s 70th birthday. This is her chilsun, which is a huge rite of passage that is celebrated by Korean families.

However, her husband continues to point out that Franny is not close with her mother. It’s surreal to be on a cruise for them and it becomes even more so as the death toll rolls out from the 9/11 attacks and keeps going up.

On board with them is Doug, who is an actor who is getting older. He is also a former star of Starlight voyages, which was the hit television series in the style of the Love Boat that was filmed on the Sonata. At the same time, Lucy is the sole Black female grad student in her department at MIT. She has taken on an invitation to go with her roommate and join them on the cruise at the same time when tech companies are doing their best to hire her and take her on.

This book looks into how we are able to balance our needs with out wants and our regrets. The world goes on and dramas keep on going. Read this book to find out what happens in the end!