Deepest Desires: Poets & Writers on R.O. Kwon
Poets & Writers has done it again: R.O. Kwon sat with Brian Gresko to talk all things Exhibit, her incredible new novel that hits shelves next month, 5/21. If you (like us) can’t wait to dive into her new book, enjoy this excerpt from the fabulous Poets & Writers current cover story. You can find the May/June issue of Poets & Writers on our B&N newsstands, and don’t miss R.O. Kwon’s conversation with Miwa on our Poured Over podcast, airing 5/23.
R.O. Kwon photo credit: Carolyn Fong
Hardcover $28.00
Exhibit: A Novel
Exhibit: A Novel
By R. O. Kwon
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
From the author of The Incendiaries comes a spirited and sexy novel about one woman’s search for meaning and feeling.
From the author of The Incendiaries comes a spirited and sexy novel about one woman’s search for meaning and feeling.
From the magazine:
The anthology she coedited with novelist Garth Greenwell, Kink (Simon & Schuster, 2021), became a best-seller, and now her sophomore novel, Exhibit, is on the nature of desire, specifically what a woman is allowed by society to want, and allows herself to want too, and what she’s willing to do and to sacrifice to achieve her deepest desires. The themes are sweeping, dramatic, serious, while the narrative in which they play out is embodied, sexy, and delightful.
“More so than with The Incendiaries, joy was a priority for me,” Kwon says. “Exuberance. Plentitude. Queer and kinky joy. In some ways I thought of Exhibit as a celebration and honoring of our bodies, and of bodies like mine, and of what people can’t help wanting.”
Kwon began drafting Exhibit before The Incendiaries had been published. She worked on it while waiting for edits and page proofs of that earlier book and then on tour, to the extent she was able with the demands of her packed schedule. A couple of years into her work on Exhibit, she felt compelled to put together an anthology of contemporary fiction related to kink in collaboration with Garth Greenwell, a novelist known for his exquisite, explicit work. She was seeking community, and she has always been the kind of person who, if she can’t find the community she is looking for, endeavors to create it.