Cocktails & Conversation with Joe Milan Jr.

Date: Thursday, August 31                               Time: 7 PM                      Location: Dog-Eared Books

Come celebrate Joe Milan Jr.’s debut novel at Dog-Eared Books with a yummy cocktail and the inside scoop on writing this book. 

The All-American is a deeply funny and poignant coming-of-age tale that turns the American immigrant narrative on its head. In the woods behind a trailer park in rural Washington, Bucky, a Korean-American high school senior, trains alone with a tire tied to his waist to pursue his singular goal: to play college football. But when the U.S. government deports him to South Korea, he finds himself alone in a country where he can’t speak the language (he can’t even pronounce his “paper name,” Yi Beyonghak), is conscripted to the army, and is obligated to pay off the debts of his long-missing bio-father. 

From a hostel and expat bar in Seoul, to rural South Korea where his bio-father is drowning in alcohol, to a remote island where a crazed sergeant still fights a bitter war with North Korean enemies, Beyonghak battles a morass of bureaucracy and betrayal in order to find his way home. Along the way, he must face down essential questions about who he is to others, and the type of man he wants to become. 

Each ticket is the price of the book. It includes both the evening with the author and a copy of the book, which you can get signed at the event!

Joe Milan Jr. is a second-generation Korean American who taught in Korea for nine years, author of the novel The All-American (W.W. Norton, 2023), and was the 2019-20 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In addition, he was a Barrick Graduate Fellow and BMI Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 

His work has appeared in wonderful places like The Rumpus, Broad Street, F(r)iction, The Kyoto Journal, and others. He is now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Waldorf University in Iowa. You can read more of his work at joemilanjr.com