Asst. Prof. Dr. Silvia Park 

Poor Unfortunate Fools is a speculative literary novel that reimagines the mermaid as a marine mammal with cetacean intelligence. Told as a science memoir that combines field journals, research papers, institutional documents, and personal correspondence, the novel follows two young marine researchers whose investigation of a rare mermaid off the coast of Jeju Island in 1988 becomes a decades-long effort to study and protect a critically endangered species.

As they document the mermaid’s transformation from an orphaned juvenile into the matriarch of a surviving pod, the researchers confront the complexities of studying a species feared and misunderstood by humans, as well as the limits of science in the face of ecological collapse. Blending speculative biology with the traditions of nature writing, Poor Unfortunate Fools examines the profound paradox of devoting a lifetime to understanding a species while bearing witness to its disappearance