R.O. Kwon: ‘I Want More of People’s Bodies, Especially in Fiction’

What books are on your night stand?

If a big earthquake hits San Francisco, the pile on my night stand might be what takes me out. It won’t be a bad way to go, though, given the company at hand: I’ve been revisiting books by queer Korean writers. There still aren’t very many of us who are publicly out, and I love our small, mighty group, one that includes Alexander Chee, Anton Hur, Franny Choi, Gina Chung, James Han Mattson, Jinwoo Chong, Joseph Han, Patrick Cottrell, Sang Young Park and Willyce Kim.

“I had to lie to myself, writing this novel,” you wrote recently. Why?

“Exhibit” is fired by multiple kinds of desire, appetites having to do with ambition, belonging and sex. The physical desire is often queer and kinky, and writing this novel required putting words to lines, thoughts and scenes so private I almost felt that I’d trespassed on myself. I had to tell myself, daily, at times out loud, that I wouldn’t let anyone else read it. I knew this to be a lie, but it was a useful fib, a protective spell.

“I trust in fear as a guiding sign,” you wrote in the same piece. Are there subjects that still make you afraid?

I have an abiding faith that, by writing things I’m afraid of saying, I might stand a chance of voicing what I, too, really need and long to see in words. In some ways, I’m always writing for a past version of myself who used to feel like a candidate for being the loneliest person in the world, too strange for wanting, hoping and lusting as I did. Books, words, have alleviated that solitude by providing a sometimes lifesaving fellowship. I wish to do at least as much for others.

What makes a good sex scene?

Since the house of fiction is large, holding infinite rooms, I suppose there must be at least as many varieties of well-imagined sex scenes. But when I’m writing one, I ask my characters what they want, what else they want, and what else on top of that. I want so much, all the time, and my characters usually do, too.

The artists in “Exhibit” are often met with anonymous hostility. Do you write that from experience?

Each time I publish anything that contains an explicitly political opinion, I’ve drawn strangers’ hostility, some of it startlingly violent. I’ve had death threats, and rape threats; from talking to friends, I know I’m hardly alone. It might be a condition of living as a woman with publicly stated opinions: People are going to tell us they want us dead. I’m hearing a bravado in what I’m saying, though, that I don’t always feel. It can be alarming. I wish things were otherwise.