By Jim Mcleod 
Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Jihyun Yun, a Korean American writer whose work crosses genre boundaries from award-winning poetry to young adult horror. Yun, who holds an MFA from New York University and has been supported by various grants and fellowships, has already established herself as a significant voice in contemporary literature with her Prairie Schooner Prize-winning debut poetry collection “Some Are Always Hungry” (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Her transition into fiction brings us her highly anticipated debut young adult novel, “And the River Drags Her Down,” scheduled for release on Rock the Boat Books on October 9, 2025, and with Knopf Books for Young Readers on Oct 7th
This debut novel introduces seventeen-year-old Soojin Han, who “has only one goal: bring her sister back to life” after Mirae’s mysterious drowning in the Black Pine River of their small coastal town. Despite the forbidden nature of her family’s legacy of necromancy, Soojin resurrects her sister, only to discover that “the girl who she used to call her sister is nothing like the one she resurrected” as Mirae grows “restless, unwilling to remain in hiding from the world, and she becomes hungry for revenge
Jihyun Yun on And the River Drags Her Down, Bone Magic and Family Hauntings
Please tell the readers a little bit about yourself and your new book
Hi there! My name is Jihyun Yun, and I’m a Korean American author from the San Francisco Bay Area in California. I started my creative writing career in poetry (my debut collection Some Are Always Hungry released in 2020.) I only started dabbling in novel writing during lockdown. And The River Drags Her Down is that lockdown baby and my first completed novel. It follows a seventeen-year-old girl named Soojin Han who uses her matrilineally passed down bone magic to resurrect her drowned sister, unintentionally afflicting a water ghost haunting on her rural California resort town. It’s a loose (very loose!) retelling of the Korean ghost story The Tale of Janghwa and Hongryeon.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
I am an avid gamer! I tend to like JRPG’s and tactics games, but I’ve also been getting into visual novel games like the Famicon Detective Club (the most recent entry into the series, Emio the Smiling Man was excellent.) I also love to cook. There’s something so therapeutic specifically about making broths and soups.
Other than the horror genre, what else has significantly influenced your writing?
As I mentioned before, I began my writing career with poetry, and I think it continues to be what influences me the most. I tend to take an interest in silences in a scene. Moments of loaded stillness between characters, and the volumes spoken through inaction, space, quietude. I think my background in poetry makes me attentive to opportunities to deploy silence to achieve an effect, in the same way I might use a line break or blank space to create emphasis or breath in a stanza.
What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?
Li-Young Lee’s The City in Which I Love You was a formative poetry collection for me when I first started taking writing seriously in college. I also was an avid fan of The Diviners series by Libba Bray when I was in high school. But if we are to go way back, I remember reading The Green Ribbon from the collection of horror stories for children In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz and it blew my five-year-old mind. I think that is the story that kickstarted my interest in horror writing, and the plot twist was so memorable it has stuck with me to this day.
How would you describe your writing style?
I think character driven and slow-burning would be the most accurate description of my style! I’ve been told my novels are descriptive with lots of attention to character interiority and background. But as this is my first completed novel, I’m interested to know if this is my style or if this is just the style that best served this particular book. I still have lots to learn about myself as a novelist.
What aspects of writing do you find the most difficult?
Most definitely plotting! Coming from poetry, it was totally new to have to construct a cohesive plot with so many moving elements. But it’s an enjoyable sort of labor, so I’m happy to wrestle my way through it.
What is the best piece of advice you ever received regarding your writing?
Honestly, the best advice I ever received was that if I’m really struggling with a project, I should put it down for a few weeks, rest and refill the well before returning to it renewed. But since this isn’t always an option for writers on a deadline, the next best advice I received was: if a section isn’t working, read it aloud! That will often help me work out when dialogue is sounding stilted or if the music of a passage is off.
Can you tell us about what you are working on next?
I don’t think I can share too much since it hasn’t been formally announced yet, but I can share that it’s a young adult horror novel, and like River, one of the main characters is a ghost.
If you could erase one horror cliché, what would be your choice?
The token marginalized character that always dies first.
And the River Drags Her Down by Jihyun Yun
Soojin has always known the rules – never bring back anything larger than her palm from the dead, but that was before Mirae died.
‘Eerie and poignant.’ Trang Thanh Tran, author of She is a Haunting
Sister, I hear you. I feel your hands in the dirt, beckoning. I will answer your call – I’ll return.
When her older sister is found drowned in the river that cuts through their small, sleepy town, Soojin is beside herself with grief. Disregarding every rule, she uses her ancestral magic to bring Mirae back from the dead. At first, the sisters delight in their reunion, but Mirae soon grows tired of hiding from the world. She becomes restless and hungry…
As the town is rocked by a series of harrowing, unusual deaths, Soojin fears the sister she brought back to life isn’t the one she knew.
Jihyun Yun
Jihyun Yun is a Korean American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her Prairie Schooner Prize winning debut poetry collection SOME ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2020. Her debut young adult novel AND THE RIVER DRAGS HER DOWN is forthcoming with Knopf BFYR in October 2025.
www.instagram.com/jihyunyunwrites
Buy the book – https://www.amazon.co.uk/River-Drags-Her-Down/dp/1836430523
Interviews on Ginger Nuts of Horror
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