A.H. Kim: Authors Interviewing Characters

A.H. Kim interviews Amelia Bae-Wood, the narrator and protagonist of Relative Strangers, a contemporary retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Amelia talks about growing up in a mixed-race family, gaining fame as the girlfriend of a Michelin-starred chef, and finding joy at Arcadia, the idyllic cancer retreat center in northern California.

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A.H. Kim: Welcome, Amelia. I just want to say, I’m a huge fan.

Amelia: Thank you so much. The feelings are mutual. Should I call you A.H.?

A.H. Kim (laughing): No, please call me Ann. That’s my name. I just write as A.H. because there’s another well-known Ann Kim out there.

Amelia: The James Beard award-winning chef?

Ann: Exactly! When I wrote my first novel and thought about getting it published, I Googled my name and saw all these hits for Ann Kim, the chef-owner of Pizzeria Lola in Minneapolis. I didn’t want to be confused with her, so I decided to write under my initials instead.

Amelia: Smart decision. It worked for J.D. Salinger, E.B. White, and J.K Rowling, so why not you?

Ann: You took the words right out of my mouth! The two of us must think alike.

Amelia and Ann (overlapping): Great minds…

Amelia and Ann (overlapping again): JINX!

(Laughter.)

Ann (catching her breath): Okay, let’s get back to business. Starting from the beginning: You grew up in a mixed-race household with a Korean father and an American mother. What was that like?

Amelia: My older sister Eleanor and I always say how lucky we were to have grown up in the Bay Area, where there are a lot of mixed-race kids like us. It wasn’t until I went east for college that people would look at me funny and ask, “What are you?” Like, what does that question even mean?

Ann: Ugh, how awful. You should have responded, “I’m human, you idiot.”

Amelia: Yeah, I wish I’d had the confidence back then to say that. Instead, I think I just mumbled incoherently for a while.

Ann: Did you grow up eating Korean food at home?

Amelia: I wish! When I was a kid, Dad spent most of his time at work, and Mom was the stay-at-home parent. Mom was a great mother but not much of a chef. Thank goodness Eleanor taught herself how to cook at a young age, or else we’d have subsisted on Lean Cuisine frozen dinners.

Ann: When did you develop your adventurous taste in food?

Amelia: While my parents weren’t great cooks, they did take us out to eat on a pretty regular basis. Again, we were lucky to live in the Bay Area where we had access to reasonably priced restaurants of all types: sushi, dim sum, tapas, burritos, all-you-can-eat Indian buffets, not to mention our family’s favorite, Korean barbecue. So, even as a child, I was exposed to a wide range of foods. And then once I started traveling the globe with my then-boyfriend, Nils, the world became my oyster.

Ann: Which is the perfect segue to my next topic: the Michelin-starred chef and former Food Network star Nils Nilsson. You were Mr. Nilsson’s girlfriend for nearly two decades. How did you first meet?

Amelia (laughing at the memory): Nils and I met when I was an undergrad in college and he was a grad student tending bar at a townie dive. I remember walking into the darkened space with a bunch of my friends, and Nils looked back at us with his icy-cold Scandinavian stare. I tried my best to flirt with him, and he responded brusquely with his sexy Nordic accent. Man, I’m such a sucker for foreign accents. That’s when I leaned over the bar and… (Pauses.) And I’ll stop there. 

Ann: Wait, why? It was just getting good.

Amelia: If you only knew. But my teenage niece Maggie will probably read this interview, and her mom Eleanor would kill me if I went beyond a PG-13 rating.

Ann: Okay, moving on. (Flips notebook page.) You are largely credited for being the muse for Mr. Nilsson’s acclaimed New York City restaurant, Amuse. But soon after receiving its second Michelin star, Amuse abruptly closed, and you and Mr. Nilsson moved out west to Mendocino, California. What inspired you to make such a drastic change?

Amelia (checking her wristwatch; she isn’t wearing one): Um, how much longer is this interview supposed to go?

Ann: We didn’t specify a time. Do you have another commitment?

Amelia: Sort of. I promised my family that I’d be home in time for dinner. 

Ann: It’s not even four o’clock.

Amelia: Maybe could you ask just one more question? Sorry, but family comes first, you know?

Ann: Okay. (Flips notebook page, and then another, and then another.) Alright, then, I’ll cut to the chase: When you first arrived here in Arcadia, what were you expecting, and how has your life changed since that day?

Amelia: I had no expectations at all. I had no idea what Arcadia was, even though Eleanor had been telling me about it for years. I was single, broke, and only had a duffle bag of worn-out clothes and used makeup to my name. Fast forward to today, and I’m busier and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I have Arcadia – and all the people I’ve met here – to thank for that.

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RELATIVE STRANGERS

From the acclaimed author of A Good Family comes a timely spin on Sense and Sensibility, a twenty-first-century family drama featuring two half-Korean sisters, their ex-hippie mother, multiple messy love affairs and one explosive secret that could ruin everything.

Amelia Bae-Wood’s life is falling apart. Unemployed, newly single and completely broke—for reasons she hasn’t told anyone yet—she finds herself hitchhiking across California to deal with the fallout of her mother’s eviction from the family estate. Amelia needs somewhere to live and time to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, so moving with her mother and sister to Arcadia, the cancer retreat center where her sister volunteers, seems like as good an idea as any.

Amelia’s sister, Eleanor, has too much on her plate, including being caught up in a court battle with a man who claims to be their half brother from Seoul and their late father’s only son—a secret love child from his Korean youth—who’s fighting for a piece of everything that belongs to the Bae-Wood women. And when Amelia adds herself to Eleanor’s list of problems, Eleanor must figure out what to hold on to—and when to let go—before things starts to unravel.

A witty, wry and enormously entertaining retelling, the sisters’ journey of self-discovery as they reshape their lives gives this classic tale a modern, feminist twist, as it touches on themes of blended families, race, class and wealth.

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A.H. Kim (Ann) was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. Ann was educated at Harvard College and Berkeley Law School, where she was an editor of the California Law Review. Ann practiced corporate law for many years and served as chief of staff to the CEO and as head of investor relations at a Fortune 200 company.

Ann is the proud mother of two sons, a longtime cancer survivor, and community volunteer. After raising her family in the Bay Area, Ann and her husband now call Ann Arbor home.

Ann’s debut novel, A GOOD FAMILY, was inspired by her personal experience supporting her brother and nieces while her sister-in-law served time in Alderson Women’s Prison Camp.

Ann’s second novel, RELATIVE STRANGERS (formerly Well Matched), is a contemporary retelling of Sense and Sensibility and explores themes of love, loss, grief, and forgiveness. RELATIVE STRANGERS will be published in April 2024.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing