Writer Paul Yoon ‘98 Shares His Inspirations and Creations at Friday Assembly
By ROXANE PARK
On Friday, Feb. 2, alumnus and acclaimed fiction writer Paul Yoon ‘98 visited the Academy to share his work and wisdom to students. Opening with a recording of a selfie-video in which he encouraged students to “pretend to be at a Taylor Swift concert,” Yoon immediately set the tone for a relaxed, sincere, and illuminating assembly.
Next, Yoon introduced his most recent book: The Hive and the Honey, a collection of short stories exploring the diaspora of ethnic Koreans across decades, countries, and realities. This idea, he shared, seemed at first a daunting task, and yet, as someone who was not connected to his family history growing up, Yoon “always knew that [he] wanted to tackle a book that was a sort of imaginary family tree, where [he] could explore the spread of people from one country.” It was not until the pandemic arrived that Yoon truly embarked on this creative journey, the similar dispersion of his acquaintances all over the world triggering his curiosity about the relatives that he knew existed somewhere in both North and South Korea.
To introduce the community to his simple yet nuanced writing style, Yoon read an excerpt from his story “Cromer,” which can be found in The Hive and The Honey, as well as published as a standalone in The Atlantic.
He was then joined on stage by senior Andrew Yuan to engage in a conversation about his process, motivations, recollections of Exeter, and love for his craft.
Paul Yoon holds Q&A in the Elting Room
Yoon confessed that the “old dead writers” that he was introduced to at the Academy have continued to be some of his favorites. Shakespeare, Dickens—he even proclaimed, “I’d take a bullet for Hemingway.” While he’d never considered it an “active art form,” as a genre that was being constantly created and expanded in the present, Yoon recalled being fascinated by the art of composition: “I fell in love with reading, storytelling, and how much you can do on a page because of those books that I read here.”
Yuan then asked Yoon if he had ever felt pressured, as many students have nowadays, to write about cultural or traumatic experiences in their Exeter English classes in order to achieve higher grades. However, Yoon shared that this had never been an issue for him; that his motivation and restrictions often came from within himself. “If there’s been any pressure,” he said, “it has just come from me—whatever I’m haunted by, whatever keeps me awake at night, or the things that we are all wrestling with but don’t know how to put it into words. That’s what I’m attempting to translate on a page.”
Similarly to this self-motivation to create, Yoon delved into what he enjoys about writing as a career and a purpose: “The fun magic, beauty, joy of fiction writing is that you have this cool venn diagram where you can take things that are so far removed from your life, but then also bring in emotionally autobiographical elements. Once those two things merge, that’s where the magic happens.”
“Writing has always been for me leaning into the idea of mystery,” he added. “I’m not writing because I want to discover the answer to something…I’m writing because I want to live in that mystery for a while and engage with it, and maybe present it in creative ways.”
Finally, Yoon shared details of the complex process of creating The Hive and the Honey. In it, Yuan observed, he balanced both the inclusion of historical truth with the expression of human emotion. “If I see some weird book about something that happened centuries ago, I just can’t help it,” Yoon said, describing his tendency to “geek out” over unique history books. “I want to learn. I’m not actively looking for ideas to work on, I’m just reading these books as a fan…It just inspires me to find some way in, to want to write about something.”
But holding onto these fragments of history is not always productive for his creative process, Yoon explained. “I get the inspiration from those textbooks, that history, those very specific details, but then in some ways, I have to forget about it to write fiction, because I don’t want to stop myself by asking, ‘Oh, was this possible?’”
In awe of Yoon’s impactful reading, unique perspective on writing, and transparency when speaking about his own life and family, students loudly applauded as he exited from the stage. “Be well, stay warm, stay out of trouble, read tons, take care of yourselves, and take care of each other,” he concluded. “Thanks everyone!”
