Korean writers take stage at 2023 Brisbane Writers Festival

Seven Korean writers, including Bora Chung of “Cursed Bunny” and Bae Suah of “Untold Night and Day,” will participate in the Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia, which kicks off on Wednesday.

The festival will run for five days until Sunday, with a total of 10 sessions scheduled for Korean writers, according to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. South Korea is the Country of Focus for this year.

Chung, who was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, is among the five Korean authors who will join the festival along with Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka. Chung will participate in several sessions including a special talk session on Thursday about her genre-defying horror fables.

Bae, the author of "Nowhere to be Found," which was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize in 2016, will talk at a “Border Crossing” session on Thursday with Krys Lee, a Korean American writer and translator. The discussion will be focused on how translation informs their respective writing processes and the cross-cultural potentialities of literature.

Choi Eun-young of “Shoko’s Smile” will take part in two sessions on Friday, including a conversation with Chung on why short stories are important. This is Choi’s first meeting with English-speaking readers since her bestselling award-winning debut collection was translated and published by Penguin Random House in 2021.

Poet Lee Young-ju of the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize-winning “Cold Candies” will attend sessions on Saturday and Sunday.

Author-illustrator Lee Ji-hyeon of “Pool” and picture book artist Lee Gi-hun of “9:47” will take part in “Word Play,” a program for young readers.

Park Sang-young of International Booker-longlisted “Love in the Big City” and poet Kim Min-jeong -- also the CEO and editor of publisher Nanda, an imprint of Munhakdongne Publishing Group -- were originally scheduled to participate in the festival, but will not be attending due to scheduling conflicts, according to LTI Korea.

Detailed schedules for some 160 events are available on the Brisbane Writers Festival’s official website.