Nancy S. Kim (born 1966) is a Korean American law professor and novelist.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Los Angeles, she was a corporate lawyer in San Francisco and a Law Professor in San Diego prior to her current position as the Michael Paul Galvin Chair in Entrepreneurship and Applied Legal Technology at Chicago-Kent College of Law. As a legal expert focusing on contracts and consent, she has written Fundamentals of Contract Law and Clauses: A Practical Approach and Consentability: Consent and its Limits.
As a novelist, she is the author of Chinhominey's Secret and Like Wind Against Rock.
Chihominey's Secret is Nancy Kim's first novel. It tells the story of the Choi family, a Korean American family in West L.A. living with a haunting prophecy from 20+ years ago. Through the family, the novel examines the generational conflict between immigrant parents and their assimilated, Americanized daughters as their Korean grandfather comes to visit. The book's title is an intentional misspelling of the Korean word for "paternal grandmother", chinhalmeoni (ì¹Âà머ëÂÂ).
Linda Richards, writing for January Magazine, praised it as "an engaging story, well told".
However, Philip Gambone of The New York Times was more critical, stating that "we're given melodramatic plot twists and scenes that serve no purpose ... and the dialogue often reads like a soap opera".
Chinhominey's Secret was a Booklist Editor's Choice for Best Adult Books for Young Adults for 1999.