In another record-breaking year for submissions, Jung’s “Right Before the Fall” was selected by guest judge, Jimin Han, among twelve finalists. “What a pleasure to read these twelve finalists’ work for the Janus Prize. The range of experimentation was exciting to see,” said Han. “Thanks to the committee who narrowed the group down to these finalists. I’m sure it was very challenging. Gratitude to all who nominated writers and to those who submitted their work.” 

The 2024 prize recipient, Olivia Jung, will receive the $5,000 prize, plus a $2,000 travel and lodging stipend. She will give a public lecture and reading at a celebratory event at 6 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 9, in the parlor of the Athenaeum Hotel as part of Chautauqua Institution’s 2024 Summer Assembly.  

Olivia Jung was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Massachusetts. A multi-genre writer, she won the 2019 Pigeon Pages Essay Contest and is anthologized in Best of the Net 2020. Her work has appeared in Post Road Magazine, CutBank Literary Magazine, Hoxie Gorge Review, Pilgrimage Magazine and other publications. She received an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught at the Westchester County Department of Corrections, Andrus, Pace University, and The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. “Right Before the Fall” was published in Issue VII of the Hoxie Gorge Review in Fall of 2023; copies of the journal will be made available for purchase throughout the 2024 Summer Season at the Chautauqua bookstore and the CLSC Octagon building.  

“Whenever I submit personal narrative essays, there is a healthy dose of doubt — is this too much, not enough, is it ready, am I ready? But I do it anyway with the hope that it reaches someone who needs it, that it reminds someone that they are not alone or opens someone’s eyes to a larger landscape and greater empathy,” stated Jung. “I am deeply grateful to Chautauqua Institution for this recognition and to all the readers and this year’s guest judge, Jimin Han, who connected with this essay. It is an incredible honor to be in the company of my fellow finalists and to have ‘Right Before the Fall’ selected for the 2024 Chautauqua Janus Prize.” 

Manager of Literary Arts, Stephine Hunt praised Jung’s winning piece as “a beautiful and powerful exploration of the layered experiences of a life haunted by trauma. Jung’s allegorical essay is stunning and innovative in its consideration of the choices we make to survive in the moments that teether between collapse and evolution.” 

Writing “Right Before the Fall,” was no small feat. “It took me nine years to write,” Jung said, “but in some ways, this essay has taken me my whole life to write. When I started it in 2014, I hadn’t stepped out on that balcony in Portland yet. I didn’t disclose to anyone the sexual abuse I had survived until 2020. Childhood sexual abuse is painful to look at. It is more prevalent than we would like to think and too often shrouded in silence. Shame and fear kept me from getting the help that I needed for a long time. I am grateful that I did. I’m alive because I did. And writing provided me a safe space to take those first steps.”  

“Putting the words on the page, giving them room to breathe and take shape, crafting them, dismantling them, and putting them back together is exhilarating and, more often than not, challenging,” Jung continued. “Getting at a truth that is both uniquely mine and universal took excavating, accountability, and looking dead-in-the-eye the experiences from my life that scared me the most.” 

Regarding Jung’s award-winning piece, guest judge, Jimin Han said, “I’m thrilled to award this year’s prize to ‘Right Before the Fall’ by Olivia Jung. It’s a bold and lyrical piece of the highest stakes — sexual abuse and suicide. By layering allegory and contemporary cultural references, Jung cracks open perspectives to create a road to a better future. I’m honored to celebrate this deeply powerful and creative work.” 

Jimin Han, who will be a Writers’ Center Resident Faculty Writer this summer, is the author of The Apology (Little, Brown and Co.), which was a 2023 Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, LA Times Most Anticipated Book, Vanity Fair Best New Book, and Apple Books Best of August. She is also the author of A Small Revolution. Additional writing of hers can be found at American Public Media’s Weekend America, Poets & Writers, Catapult, and other media outlets. She teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Pace University, and community writing centers. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she grew up in Providence, Rhode Island; Dayton, Ohio; and Jamestown, New York. Her work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. 

ABOUT THE CHAUTAUQUA JANUS PRIZE   
Awarded annually since 2018, the Chautauqua Janus Prize celebrates an emerging writer’s single work of short fiction or nonfiction for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder literary conventions, historical narratives and readers’ imaginations. In addition to receiving a $5,000 award and a travel stipend, the winner gives a lecture on the grounds during the summer season and appears in a forthcoming issue of the literary journal Chautauqua. Named for Janus, the Roman god who looks to both the past and the future, the prize honors writing with a command of craft that renovates our understandings of both. The prize is funded by a generous donation from Barbara, Hilary and Twig Branch. Eligible short prose that is either unpublished or published after Jan. 31, 2024, will be accepted as submissions for the 2025 prize beginning this fall. More information can be found at chq.org/janus.   

ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY ARTS  
With a history steeped in the literary arts, Chautauqua Institution is the home of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, founded in 1878, which honors at least nine outstanding books of fiction, nonfiction, essays and poetry with community discussions and author presentations every summer. Further literary arts programs at Chautauqua include the Kwame Alexander Writers’ Lab & Conference, which convenes writers each June in workshops, panels, and other conversations that draw fruitful and urgent connections between the personal, the political and the craft of writing, as well as the summer-long workshops, craft lectures and readings from some of the very best author-educators in North America at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center.  

ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION   
Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer — and year-round through the CHQ Assembly online platforms — with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. 

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