Discipline: Literature – fiction

R.O. Kwon

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: San Francisco, CA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2017, 2020
More: ro-kwon.com

R.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was published by Riverhead (U.S.) and Virago/Little Brown (U.K.), and it is being translated into six languages. Named a best book of the year by more than 40 publications, The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book, Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, and Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize. Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Buzzfeed, NPR, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.

While at MacDowell in 2020, she completed a draft of her second novel, Exhibit (Riverhead, 2024).

Portrait by Smeeta Mahanti

Made at MacDowell

Fellow Works Supported by MacDowell

Exhibit (Novel)

Studios

MacDowell

R.O. Kwon worked in the MacDowell studio.

Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…

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