Nami Mun

Fictionalized accounts of teenage runaways usually depict drugged-out, tough-talking boys plagued by inner demons and explosive anger. Seldom are they given the voice of someone like Joon, a 13-year-old girl and Korean immigrant trying to survive in the New York underbelly of the 1980s. In the book Miles from Nowhere, debut novelist Nami Mun follows the young narrator over the course of five years on the streets as she fights through heartbreaking, agonizing experiences. Mun, a respected short-story writer, brings a human face to an oftentimes cliché story line in her first novel.