J.B. Hwang + Jinwoo Chong: Mendell Station

Join us for a release event with acclaimed writer J.B. Hwang, discussing her debut novel Mendell Station. Joining J.B. in conversation is notable author and writer Jinwoo Chong. This event will be hosted at The Strand at Columbus Ave at 450 Columbus Ave.

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A tender debut that follows a woman who, after her best friend’s death, loses her faith and quits her job to join the postal service, quickly becoming an ‘essential worker’ as the city shuts down.

"A surprising and evocative debut." —Grace D. Li, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief

It’s January 2020, and Miriam is already getting a sense that the world might be ending. First, she learns that her best friend, Esther, has died. Then her faith in God—in everything, really—follows suit. Her job teaching Scripture at a private Christian school suddenly seems untenable, so she quits. Thankfully, the postal service is hiring.

While Miriam finds comfort in her route, the mail truck can hardly outpace the memory of her lost friend and eroded faith. She finds herself composing letters to Esther that she will never deliver, reflecting on their shared childhoods and deep understanding of each other’s difficult families.

Mendell Station depicts one woman’s deliverance through the peculiar rhythms of work, and the beauty found in small details and gestures, those quotidian labors of love.

Photo credit: Kenzi Crash

J.B. Hwang received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida, and her short fiction and translation can be found in The Temz Review, The Denver Quarterly, Oxford Magazine, and december magazine. She lived in San Francisco for eight years and worked as a mail carrier during the pandemic. She currently lives in Philadelphia.

Photo credit: Kristen Fedor

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels and , a Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a best book of 2023 by Apple Books, Amazon Books, Esquire, HuffPost, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Goodreads. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature. He lives in New Jersey with his husband and cat.

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