Gene Kwak

Gene Kwak has published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, Wigleaf, and Electric Literature among others.

Go Home, Ricky! was his debut novel and was a Rumpus October Book Club Selection, was featured in Vanity Fair magazine and Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, and has garnered rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist among others. In 2023, it was translated into French by Le Gospel Press. He is also the winner of the 2022 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen WEX Prize, has attended workshops at Tin House and Yale, and plans to attend the Jentel Artist Residency.

He is a former Periplus mentor and is a co-founder of Tiger Balm, a Korean American writer's collective, with Joseph Han. He currently lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.