Basketball and Korean dramas were the unlikely topics of discussion during fiction writer Matthew Salesses’ book reading and signing of his novel “The Sense of Wonder.”

The novel, which is described as a “very meta take on love, sports, race, and media,” by Kirkus Reviews, was written in two parts by the author — then smashed together as part of his Ph.D. program.

The first half is a reimagining of the story of Asian American basketball star Jeremy Lin, who joined the New York Knicks in 2011. This part of the novel is a love letter not only to the strides Lin made for Asian representation but also to basketball itself.

“Jeremy Lin came off the end of the Knicks bench and led a very terrible Knicks team to six wins in his first six starts — putting up 30 points a game,” Salesses said.

“I actually had grown up wanting to be an NBA basketball player. This is still my one true dream,” he joked. “It was really the best I’ve ever felt about America and seemed to offer this moment in time when the country was about to open its doors to Asian Americans and the many possibilities of what life could be.”

However, The tone of the country changed when Lin stopped winning. 

“Then the first loss came and there was a racist headline on ESPN. The whole thing kind of came crashing down.”

Salesses thought, “Well, I guess I have to write this book at some point.”

Throughout his writing assignments, Salesses found a different approach to capture the sense of wonder he initially found in writing about the basketball player.

In 2017, after giving birth to their second child, Salesses’ late wife was diagnosed with cancer.

“The book kind of had to change shape. Because my life had changed shape,” he said.

“I spent a lot of time going up and down from Busan to Seoul, Korea with her on the train … sitting by her bed in the hospital, while she underwent chemo treatments and I wrote this book.”

During this time, he and his wife watched Korean Dramas, also known as K-dramas, which would blossom into the second half of the novel. 

“The Sense of Wonder” includes a K-drama script, written by Salesses, that functions as a meta-storytelling tool and an appreciative tribute to the genre. 

In introducing the screenplay, Salesses explained the fundamentals of K-drama, such as its reliance on tropes.

“Some of the best tropes I think are body-swapping, gender-bending, ghosts and characters from folktales. There’s a lot of amnesia, sudden cancer or accidents. There’s contract relationships, enemies to friends or enemies to lovers, Cinderella stories, et cetera,” he said.

“It’s not a genre that really shies away from the tropes, they kind of lean into it and enjoy the culture of showing people things that they expect.”

At the core of K-drama is a stark difference from western media, Salesses said. While western storytelling functions around personal choices moving the narrative, K-dramas are concerned with fate and divinity. The character’s choices and actions do not move the narrative forward, fate does.

During the Q&A portion of Salesses’ visit, he was asked what inspired him to combine such different tales. 

His answer was, “I wanted to pretend that I was doing research when I was watching basketball.”

Although Salesses spoke mainly of his fictional work “The Sense of Wonder,” he is also well known for his reference book “Craft in the Real World,” which explores different ways to write.

UCA professor of creative writing Stephanie Vanderslice introduced Salesses with a glowing anecdote about discovering this book.

She asked the audience to imagine her experience, “You start to read it and you don’t stop because you can’t stop. You finish your first reading of ‘Craft in the Real World’ in one day and by the end you are full — no, you are overflowing with the knowledge that you have read, something that will eternally change how creative writing is taught in ways that are long overdue.”

The book reading, part of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences’ Artist in Residence program, was followed by a book signing where attendees huddled around the author with their dog-eared and well-loved copies of his novels.

Salesses novels are available online and in stores.