Yoo, David 1974-

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Yoo, David 1974-

PERSONAL: Born 1974, in Manchester, CT. Ethnicity:“Asian American.”Education: Skidmore College, B.A., 1996; University of Colorado-Boulder, M.A., 1998. Hobbies and other interests:“Soccer, tennis, Crock-Pot cooking, napping in the afternoon and waking up extremely angry, and backgammon.”

ADDRESSES: Home— MA. Agent— Steve Malk, Writer’s House, 3368 Governor Dr., #224F, San Diego, CA 92122; smalkwritershouse.com. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Books for the Teen Age selection, New York Public Library, 2006, for Girls for Breakfast.

WRITINGS

Girls for Breakfast (novel), Delacorte (New York, NY), 2005.

Guys Write for Guys Read, edited by Jon Scieszka, Viking (New York, NY) 2005.

Contributor to books, including Rush Hour: Face: A Journal of Contemporary Voices, edited by Michael Cart, Delacorte (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: David Yoo is the author of the coming-of-age novel Girls for Breakfast. The work concerns Nick Park, a frustrated Korean-American high school student in suburban Connecticut. While his classmates rehearse for graduation, Nick looks back at his childhood and adolescence, hoping to discover what led to his disastrous experience at senior prom. “Some of Nick’s predicaments are amusing,” noted a critic in Kirkus Reviews, such as Nick’s attempt to gain friends by offering martial arts lessons despite his absolute lack of knowledge and training. Recalling how friends would mock his father’s heavy accent and how girls would ignore him, Nick mistakenly concludes that his problems are tied to his ethnicity, rather than to his insecurities. Through his recollections, “readers get to know a confused and lonely young man who is trying to know himself by any means necessary,” remarked Jessi Platt in the School Library Journal.

“I suppose there are any number of ways to write,” Yoo observed on the Random House Web site, “but in my case I simply can’t do it unless I have total isolation. So much so that on the rare occasion when I do venture outside, my voice sounds funny to me, and I walk weird, as if I’m fourteen again and paranoid that everyone’s watching me. Actually, this hermit-lifestyle has helped me write about teens, because in regressing I get to re-experience how I used to function back then.”