Drifting House by Krys Lee

The nine stories are about Koreans who seem to be either figuratively or literally unmoored from their lives, both in their home countries and abroad.  All of the stories are wonderful, but three standouts are the title story, "Salaryman", Lee's first published story, and "The Goose Father", which she said "turned from a story about a social situation (Goose fathers are men who sen their wives and children abroad so that the children can escape the extreme competitiveness of the educational system while they, the fathers, stay in Korea to work and earn money) into a love story."
I was impressed with Krys Lee the writer while I was devouring the stories in Drifting House, and I was even more impressed with her personally.  She was articulate and thoughtful.  She had so many interesting and helpful things to say about the writing process that had to have been encouraging to any fledgling authors present.  Something that particularly resonated with me was her comment that fiction writers should read a lot of poetry.  Lee started out writing poetry, which explains the graceful economy of her prose and her memorable images. She said, "Poetry is everything to me."