The Big Idea: Isabel J. Kim

Two paths diverge in a wood… and what happens when, in fact, you can travel both? In her debut novel Sublimation, author Isabel J. Kim looks at what happens when the road less taken is never not taken, and how a question in school set her on a new path. ISABEL J. KIM: I am going to tell you a story that I have never publicly told before. It is about the ignoble origins of Sublimation. And for context, Sublimation is a speculative fiction novel set in a universe where when you cross a border with the intention to leave, you split into two people. Literally. Sublimation is about other things, too—the artificial nature of borders, the way in which human beings impose their technological will on natural processes, control and, freedom and the unhappy marriage of big tech and government and how it is hard to talk to people when you don’t know what you want—but the crux of it is: Sublimation is a story about being confronted by a life you didn’t lead. When I was seventeen, I was taking a…