Ahead of the February 11 Residence 11 Desire Summit on Sex and Relationships (get tickets here!), we’re conducting a series of livestream interviews with Summit speakers. You can watch them live or after the fact on our YouTube channel, Facebook page or Twitter account, and ask questions for our interviewees.
Watch our interview below where Residence 11 Editor-in-Chief Rachel Kramer Bussel and Suzanne Park discuss writing the modern romance novel. Suzanne shares with us her first experiences with romance novels, what the sub-genre sweet romance means to her, finding your own writing community, tips for new writers looking to try their hand at writing romance, along with many other insightful anecdotes about her writing experience and knowledge.
Suzanne Park is a Korean American writer and author of romance novels for both young adult and adult. Some of the titles by Park include The Do Over, So We Meet Again, Loathe at First Sight, and more. Park was born and raised in Tennessee, graduated from Columbia University and received an MBA from UCLA. Prior to being an author, Park was a stand-up comedian where she appeared on BET, was the winner of the Seattle Sierra Mist Comedy Competition, and was a semi-finalist in NBC’s “Stand Up For Diversity” showcase in San Francisco. Her novels have been featured in “best of” lists in NPR, Popsugar, Real Simple, Country Living, Bustle, Buzzfeed, Marie Claire, Parade, Shondaland and The Today Show.
On how she defines the subgenre sweet romance:
“I think it’s easier to define now, because of the boom of TikTok. It’s basically the opposite of steamy and spicy. And I don’t know if I would have been able to describe it even two or three years ago, without seeing it and identifying it and just be able to say it once I saw an example. But now I would say it is closed door.”
“If it were based on emojis, it would be half or zero eggplants and half or zero of the flames out of five. And I think that although that is sort of the informal way of people that describing the spiciness and steaminess of romance.”
On her next book coming out, The Do Over:
“The Do Over is about a Korean American author and career consultant Lily Lee, and she finds out during a job hunting process, she gets her dream job and finds out that during the background check process, that she actually didn’t complete her college degree. So she has to go back to college 10 years later, and finish her degree because her books are all about finding the best career. And then finds out while she’s there that her computer science TA, Jake Chou, he is her ex college boyfriend. So the whole book is kind of a mix of self discovery, and also a second chance romance.”
On the importance of writing Korean American characters and diversity in fiction:
“Why I write this is because and I think a lot of my friends who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) authors we talk about this fairly often is a lot of stories that are bought by publishing, incorporate themes of intergeneration. Or just trauma in general, or extreme racism or something where it’s almost like sadness to it. And I like to show joy and have my characters have happily ever afters. I think marginalized character characters deserve happy endings. And so I feel like my goal is to show a character who has a very difficult situation, overcome it, in the workplace, or through in their own personal lives, and also have that happily ever after both in their life and also in love”.
“A lot of folks who are not necessarily Korean American, they could be Filipino American, or they could be Hispanic… and have multiple generations, like first through fourth. And they related to one of my characters (from the books Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous), Sunny Song, she’s a third generation Korean American, they related to her so strongly. And they told me why. And it was due to the struggle with language, and when it came to food and bringing families together. Some of the themes really resonated.”
Watch the whole interview above and be sure to subscribe to our channels to catch all our interviews!
About the Desire Summit: The Residence 11 Desire Summit, sponsored by sex toy companies FUN FACTORY and Blush, intimate audio platform BLOOM, romance novel publisher Avon Books, and yoga teacher training company Ganja Yoga, will feature extensive educational sessions with over 20 diverse authors and subject matter experts across psychology, physical intimacy, technology innovation, sexual health, music and narrative storytelling. Speakers include writer Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of The Sex Lives of African Women, polyamory expert Kevin Patterson, author of Love’s Not Color Blind, sex educator and dating expert Erin Tillman, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling romance author and TikTok favorite Sierra Simone (Priest, American Queen), Mia Hopkins (author of Tanked, one of The New York Times’ best 2022 romances, romance novelist Suzanne Park (The Do Over, The Christmas Clash), and Taylor Hahn, author of swinging novel The Lifestyle, among others. Keynote speakers will be intimacy coach Zoë Kors, author of Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve, speaking on 6 Questions That Will Get You Instantly Connected to Anyone, and sex educator Dirty Lola, who appeared as a sexpert on Netflix’s The Principles of Pleasure, speaking on The State of Modern Dating. Get tickets here for the Desire Summit.