Praised for the distilled beauty of his prose, Paul Yoon to read at Bates

Paul Yoon, novelist. (Peter Yoon)

Paul Yoon, novelist. (Peter Yoon)

Author of the acclaimed story collection Once the Shore and the novel Snow Hunters, for which he received the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, Paul Yoon reads at Bates at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by Language Arts Live, the reading is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6326.

Once the Shore, Yoon’s first book, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Debut of the Year by National Public Radio. It also won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction and a 5 under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation.

2013’s Snow Hunters is “a subtle, elegant, poignant read” (Oprah.com) depicting a Korean War refugee who emigrates to Brazil to become a tailor’s apprentice and confronts the wreckage of his past.

Yoon’s minimalism, writes National Public Radio reviewer Alana Levinson, becomes the “driving, masterful force” in Snow Hunters. “Every word is purposeful, and there is an air of meditation in Yoon’s modest sentences. While the first draft was over 500 pages, the final is a mere 208: it’s evident that only the best, most important, prose remained.”

Yoon was born in New York City. He lives in Massachusetts and is the Roger F. Murray Chair in Creative Writing at Phillips Academy.