Ishle Yi Park
Image is not available
Image is not available
•••
ANGEL & HANNAH

I am excited to announce the release of my debut novel!

"A tender and honest story of young love striving to survive the streets."
- Kirkus Review

“ANGEL & HANNAH is triumphant. Ishle Yi Park’s narrative sequence of sonnets is sensuous, tender and faceted like cut glass. I feel protective of Angel and Hannah. I want their love to flourish like an empress tree growing in an abandoned lot in Queens. These erotic, fresh and absolutely necessary poems of a cross-racial romance need to be trumpeted from the rooftops, overtaking the canonized Romeos and Juliets and Heathcliffs and Catherines. I love this book.”
— CATHY PARK HONG, award-winning author of Minor Feelings and and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People

“Angel & Hannah is a gorgeously written, unforgettable, sweet and wild love story. In the heart of Queens and Brooklyn, we feel the electricity of a first love, race and culture, desire and trouble, as the young lovers come alive, “stunned in sweetness.” Park writes, “Why are they in love, you ask? Why does water love sky? Moon chase sun? Light reflect light?” The brilliant, cinematic verse and boundless heart let us breathe in the music of Angel and Hannah’s grace and grief. I love and recommend this book with my whole heart.
— LEE HERRICK, former poet laureate of Fresno, California and author of Scar and Flower

I am excited to announce the upcoming release of my debut novel!

" A tender and honest story of young love striving to survive the streets."
- Kirkus Review

Image is not available
Image is not available
EVENTS | MAY 11 - 15
PLEASE JOIN ME IN CELEBRATION OF THE PUBLICATION OF ANGEL & HANNAH
EVENTS + READINGS
All events are virtual & start times for EDT, unless otherwise indicated
13 MAY

WALLACE FOUNDATION

Celebrating Diversity: Artist Salon with the Wallace Foundation for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY

A conversation with Taiyo Na, a Queens-based writer, educator, and musician.

JOURNEY CAFE:
LIVE, In-person event

You're Invited to the Hawai'i Book Launch
for Angel & Hannah!
Come celebrate da birth of this new love story into the world ~ come celebrate with aloha!
Look forward to seeing you!

// PAST EVENTS //
CHECK HOST FOR REPLAYS
ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS WORKSHOP:
Books are Magic

Book launch, in conversation with Willie Perdomo author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix.

LOYALTY BOOKSTORES

Founded by a Black and Queer Bookseller, this Maryland shop centers BIPOC and Queer voices. Donations in any amount toward the event goes to Black Lives Matter DC.

EVENTS | MAY 11 - 15
EVENTS | MAY 11 - 15
PLEASE JOIN ME IN CELEBRATION OF THE PUBLICATION OF ANGEL & HANNAH
EVENTS + READINGS
All events are virtual & start times for EDT, unless otherwise indicated
13 MAY

WALLACE FOUNDATION

Celebrating Diversity: Artist Salon with the Wallace Foundation for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY

A conversation with Taiyo Na, a Queens-based writer, educator, and musician.

JOURNEY CAFE:
LIVE, In-person event

You're Invited to the Hawai'i Book Launch
for Angel & Hannah!
Come celebrate da birth of this new love story into the world ~ come celebrate with aloha!
Look forward to seeing you!

// PAST EVENTS //
CHECK HOST FOR REPLAYS
ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS WORKSHOP:
Books are Magic

Book launch, in conversation with Willie Perdomo author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix.

LOYALTY BOOKSTORES

Founded by a Black and Queer Bookseller, this Maryland shop centers BIPOC and Queer voices. Donations in any amount toward the event goes to Black Lives Matter DC.

EVENTS | MAY 11 - 15
Slide 1
PLEASE JOIN ME IN CELEBRATION OF THE PUBLICATION OF ANGEL & HANNAH
EVENTS + READINGS
All events are virtual & start times for EDT, unless otherwise indicated
ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY

A conversation with Taiyo Na, a Queens-based writer, educator, and musician.

JOURNEY CAFE:
LIVE, In-person event

You're Invited to the Hawai'i Book Launch
for Angel & Hannah!
Come celebrate da birth of this new love story into the world ~ come celebrate with aloha!
Look forward to seeing you!

// PAST EVENTS //
CHECK HOST FOR REPLAYS
LOYALTY BOOKSTORES

Founded by a Black and Queer Bookseller, this Maryland shop centers BIPOC and Queer voices. Donations in any amount toward the event goes to Black Lives Matter DC.

Book launch, in conversation with Willie Perdomo author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix.

WALLACE FOUNDATION

Celebrating Diversity: Artist Salon with the Wallace Foundation for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

ADVANCED PRAISE HEADER
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ANGEL AND HANNAH
CATHY PARK HONG
— CATHY PARK HONG, award-winning author of Minor Feelings
ANGEL & HANNAH is triumphant. Ishle Yi Park’s narrative sequence of sonnets is sensuous, tender and faceted like cut glass. I feel protective of Angel and Hannah. I want their love to flourish like an empress tree growing in an abandoned lot in Queens. These erotic, fresh and absolutely necessary poems of a cross-racial romance need to be trumpeted from the rooftops, overtaking the canonized Romeos and Juliets and Heathcliffs and Catherines. I love this book.”
KIRKUS REVIEW
— Kirkus review
" A tender and honest story of young love striving to survive the streets."
TINA CHIANG
—TINA CHANG, award-winning poet and author of Hybrida
“Ishle Yi Park speaks to us from the most tender, furious, and emotionally raw space in her breathtaking novel-in-verse. Angel & Hannah makes love feel revolutionary and desire feel like embattled truth. Reading it,I was often breathless, believing in the brilliance that is the bruised wonder of youth. Park brings us as close to a heart’s fire as we are willing to go and leaves us soaring over the possibility of a new dream.”
HANIF ABDURRAQIB
– HANIF ABDURRAQIB, award-winning author of A Fortune for Your Disaster and Go Ahead in the Rain
“I love the way that verse and form offer a type of restraint, inside of which the imagination of both writer and reader can flourish. Ishle Yi Park does a stunning job of using stunning bursts of language and imagery to reconceptualize and reframe a familiar narrative.
I loved sinking into the world of this book. I could feel the seasons changing.”
LEE HERRICK
— LEE HERRICK, former poet laureate of Fresno, California and author of Scar and Flower
“Angel & Hannah is a gorgeously written, unforgettable, sweet and wild love story. In the heart of Queens and Brooklyn, we feel the electricity of a first love, race and culture, desire and trouble, as the young lovers come alive, “stunned in sweetness.” Park writes, “Why are they in love, you ask? Why does water love sky? Moon chase sun? Light reflect light?” The brilliant, cinematic verse and boundless heart let us breathe in the music of Angel and Hannah’s grace and grief. I love and recommend this book with my whole heart.”
BUSHA REHMAN 1
— Bushra Rehman, Author of Marianna’s Beauty Salon &
editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism
“The sonnets in Angel & Hannah are exquisite. Through a literary sorcery equal parts magic and craft, Ishle Yi Park has taken the old school form of the sonnet and brought it to life through the love story of Angel and Hannah, children of immigrants, children of the outer boroughs, before the outer boroughs were hip....
BUSHA REHMAN 2
"..As you read, you will ache with Angel and Hannah, love with them, feel your heart quiver with the rise and fall of their love story. Park’s meditation on the brutality of the world towards young, urban love, is uplifting and heart-breaking. She is one of the most brilliant and inventive writers I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.”
DIEGO BAEZ 1
— Diego Báez
"In this contemporary take on the story of Romeo and Juliet in the form of a novel-in-verse, singer and poet Park reimagines the roles and transports the action to New York City in 1993. Hannah is a Korean teen from the borough of Queens who finds herself enrapt with Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn. The two fall in love in the springtime, and this playful tale follows their entwined fates through the four seasons. While most readers know how the story goes, what stands out is Park's devotion to building each character and the uniquely vibrant world around them. At the fateful quinceañera....
DIEGO BAEZ 2
— Diego Báez
"...At the fateful quinceañera where the star-crossed lovers meet, for example, the night is alive with Nike sneakers, early 1990s rap, Philly Blunts, and of loads of malt liquor. Likewise, Park's intermingling of slang with fragments of Spanish and Korean electrify the free-verse lyrics that dance and slide across the pages. With an energy and attitude closer to Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights than West Side Story, the spoken-word style of Park's wildly creative rendition will entrance readers."
previous arrow
next arrow
EXCERPT
-- Quiet, from Angel & Hannah
She laughs & talks constantly to fill da spaces,
her fears, her insecurities, the lacunae,
but learns to Still, with him —to relax
into the moment. Breathe. He doesn’t say

much, mostly one-word answers. Never one for small talk,
He’s a little kid inside, rejoicing in play.
She lets her guard down, her petals unfurl;
lets her smile bring a spark of sunlit joy to his harsh world.

She feels safe & calmed by his quiet, lithe grace
as a candle cupped in two warm palms. She softly glows ~
Ay, mi Angelito.
Te quiero . . . te amo ~
mi cielo.
He’s so silent, she muses, watching him
stare at the sun slipping into the sea
from the docks at South Street Seaport.
She loves his quiet, how deep & still he is;
an indigo ocean inside him.
his chiseled cheekbones show the sharpness
of his unspoken hungers, his eyes, deep pools
of the quiet sorrows he carries.
he finds other ways to reach her ~ twirls a long
grass blade by her ear, tickling her, chewing its ends,
picking her up & carrying her piggyback down salty blocks.

Arriving May 11, available from the
publisher , or wherever books are sold.

EXCERPT
-- Quiet, from ANGEL & HANNAH
He’s so silent, she muses, watching him
stare at the sun slipping into the sea
from the docks at South Street Seaport.
She loves his quiet, how deep & still he is;
an indigo ocean inside him.
his chiseled cheekbones show the sharpness
of his unspoken hungers, his eyes, deep pools
of the quiet sorrows he carries.
She laughs & talks constantly to fill da spaces,
her fears, her insecurities, the lacunae,
but learns to Still, with him —to relax
into the moment. Breathe. He doesn’t say

much, mostly one-word answers. Never one for small talk,
he finds other ways to reach her ~ twirls a long
grass blade by her ear, tickling her, chewing its ends,
picking her up & carrying her piggyback down salty blocks.
He’s a little kid inside, rejoicing in play.
She lets her guard down, her petals unfurl;
lets her smile bring a spark of sunlit joy to his harsh world.

She feels safe & calmed by his quiet, lithe grace
as a candle cupped in two warm palms. She softly glows ~
Ay, mi Angelito.
Te quiero . . . te amo ~
mi cielo.

Available now,
from the publisher, or wherever books are sold.