Mary H.K. Choi

Mary H.K. Choi (born November 21, 1979) is an American author, editor, television and print journalist. She is the author of the young adult novels Emergency Contact and Permanent Record (2019). She is the culture correspondent on Vice News Tonight on HBO and was previously a columnist at Wired and Allure magazines as well as a freelance writer.

Life Mary Hyun Kyung Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea on November 21, 1979 and immigrated to Hong Kong before her first birthday. She lived there until moving to Texas just before she turned 14. Choi's parents owned and managed a Korean restaurant to support their family. She attended a large public high school in a suburb of San Antonio, After college, Choi lived in New York until moving to Los Angeles circa 2014,

Her brother is Marvel and DC artist Michael Choi. She speaks four languages. in 2002. Through her time at XXL, she published as Mary Choi; since then, she has included her middle initials. her relationship with her mom, music, She has been a columnist at Wired, editor-at-large for MTV Style and a contributing editor at Allure. The New York Times, New York, The Atlantic, Billboard and The Fader.

Choi is a culture correspondent at Vice News Tonight on HBO. She was the executive producer of House of Style: Music, Models and MTV, a 2012 documentary. In 2013 she became the supervising producer, then head writer, of Take Part Live, a daily live news show for Participant Media.

Choi hosts a monthly podcast called Hey, Cool Job!, in which she interviews her peers and friends about their jobs and the paths they took to arrive in their roles. Notable guests include journalist Jenna Wortham, porn actress Asa Akira, and comedian Joel Kim Booster. She also hosts a more casual, "stream of consciousness" style mini podcast called Hey, Cool Life!. The minipod, spanning between 10-20 minutes in length, is a place where Choi focuses on the intersection of mental health and creativity. She mentions that she created the podcast after being inspired by her love of voice memos she would send to her friends.

Books Choi was the writer of Marvel Comics' Lady Deadpool No. 1. She has also written Marvel's Shanna the She-Devil and has contributed to the CMYK anthology and the Ghosts anthology for Vertigo Comics.

In 2014, Choi published a collection of essays as a Kindle single called, Oh, Never Mind, which describes, among other topics, her decision to leave New York. She had met with a number of editors and grew frustrated by the pessimism she encountered about the sales prospects for an essay collection; instead she accepted an offer from Amazon to write the short collection of essays as a Kindle Single for a $5000 payment plus 70% of profits, the right to set the price of the collection, and retention of full ownership of the copyright.

Choi's first novel, Emergency Contact, is a young adult novel published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster. Choi has described the book as partly inspired by Judy Blume's novel Forever..., because Blume had "said she just wanted to write a story about ‘two people who have sex but then nothing terrible happens'...I love that," Choi told The New York Times. giving Sam her number after she happens to be passing by as Sam has his first panic attack. Writing for Entertainment Weekly, David Canfield said in Emergency Contact, Choi "vividly realizes Korean-American culture and explores microaggressions on a sharply recognizable level...weav[ing] these experiences into a narrative rife with witty banter and steamy romantic chemistry; the YA frame doesn't push the more challenging material to the margins, but rather renders it naturalistically potent."

Works and publications

Choi, Mary H.K., Lady Deadpool #1. Marvel Comics, 2010; UPC: 5960607113-00111 Choi, Mary H.K., Ghosts. Vertigo Comics (DC Comics), 2012. Choi, Mary H.K., CMYK (black). Vertigo Comics (DC Comics), 2015; Choi, Mary H.K., Emergency Contact. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018; Choi, Mary H.K., Permanent Record. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019; Choi, Mary H.K., Yolk. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2021; Choi, Mary H.K., Pool House. Flatiron Books, 2026;