Cleary Gottlieb hosted its APA Heritage Month celebration, “Lifting the Asian American Voice: A Celebration of the AAPI Community,” a conversation with Min Jin Lee, award-winning, bestselling novelist, and essayist.
Over 200 participants attended the virtual event. Managing Partner Michael Gerstenzang delivered welcome remarks, and associate Charity Lee moderated the discussion.
Min Jin discussed her life and career as a trailblazing writer. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Min Jin and her family immigrated to Queens, New York when she was seven years old. After studying history at Yale College and law at Georgetown University, she practiced law for two years before pursuing a writing career.
Min Jin’s debut novel, Free Food For Millionaires was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, USA Today, and a national bestseller, and is currently being adapted as a Netflix television series. Pachinko, her second novel, is the first novel written for an adult, English-speaking audience about the Korean-Japanese people. An international bestseller, Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, a New York Times 10 Best Books, and was also a Top 10 Books of the Year for BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library.
Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Times of London, Food & Wine, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal.
Noted for her award-winning fiction that explores the intersection of race, ethnicity, immigration, class, religion, gender, and identity of a diasporic people, Min Jin is a recipient of fiction fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was named as an Adweek Creative 100 for being one of the “10 Writers and Editors Who are Changing the National Conversation” and a Frederick Douglass 200.
Min Jin is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is currently at work on Name Recognition: A Memoir of Visibility and Voice and is researching and writing her third novel, American Hagwon, which will complete “The Koreans” trilogy.
Cleary is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The firm regularly hosts important cultural events and guest speakers whose presentations afford opportunities to broaden awareness, heighten the level of discussion, and establish a culture of inclusion at the firm. To learn more about Cleary’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, click here.