Oakland, CA—April 26, 2017
Graduates of the Mills College MFA in Prose Program, Nina La Cour and Christine Hyung-Oak
Lee have each published new works garnering critical praise.
LaCour is a young adult novelist who won the 2009 Northern California Book Award for
Children’s Literature, was featured in Publishers Weekly as a Flying Starts Author, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. Her
fourth book, We Are Okay, is “short, poetic, and gorgeously written,” according to The New York Times. The story centers on a first-year college student who is forced to confront grief
and loneliness. “The power in this little book,” states the reviewer, “is in seeing
Marin come out on the other side of loss.”
Lee’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Guernica magazine, The New York Times, and on The Rumpus and BuzzFeed. In her new memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember, she chronicles the experience of suffering a stroke at age 33 and then piecing together
her memory, physical function, and personal life. Lee was featured in an interview with National Public Radio’s Scott Simon and her book has won praise by Susannah
Cahalan, whose bestselling memoir Brain on Fire tells a similar account of mental recovery.
Both LaCour and Lee hail from Mills’ Class of 2006, although Lee’s studies at Mills
were interrupted by her illness and recovery.