R.O. Kwon’s Jade Rings

R.O. Kwon asks her ancestors for help. Two jade rings in particular, passed down by her mother, serve as a direct line and source of comfort.

Ms. Kwon, an award-winning author, wanted to be a Christian pastor or a religious recluse when she was growing up. She had, as she put it, “what felt like a conversation with the Lord going.” But she lost her faith as a teenager. Now, in her writing, Ms. Kwon explores the challenge of questioning long-held beliefs.

Her first novel, “The Incendiaries,” tackled religion, while her second, “Exhibit,” out last month, is about hidden desire. She wanted to write a book “centering desire, including queer desire and kinky desire,” she said, because in the past, she has felt “desperately alone in wanting as I do.”

Ms. Kwon spoke, in an edited and condensed interview, about how she turns to her ancestral jade rings for strength and the comfort of having them on while she types.

Talk about the rings you’re wearing.

They’re double jade rings and they’re from my mother, who received them at her wedding from her mother-in-law. She had them throughout my childhood, but she only ever wore them for very special occasions, like my wedding.