KLWAVE - Directories | Authors | Authors_View

천운영

Cheon Un-yeong scrap

천운영

Category
Literary Fiction 소설
Target User
Adult 성인
Period
Contemporary 현대

Author Bio 작가 소개

Cheon Un-yeong’s books have been published in Chinese, Japanese, French, and Russian. She was invited to the Saint-Louis Literary Festival after the French edition of her book Farewell, Circus! (Adieu le cirque!) was published by Serge Safran Éditeur in 2013. She stayed in Malaga, Spain in 2013 as part of LTI Korea’s writing residency program. She will stay at the Residencia De Estudiantes in Madrid, Spain later this year.

1. Life

Cheon was born in Seoul in 1971. She studied journalism at Hanyang University and creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts and Korea University Graduate School. She made her literary debut in 2000, winning the Dong-a Ilbo New Writer`s Award with the short story `Baneul` (바늘 Needle). Cheon is known for undertaking serious research before writing. For her first short story collection, Baneul, she worked at a livestock market in Majang-dong and at the kitchen of a sushi restaurant for firsthand experience. She also boarded smuggling vessels departing from China several times when writing her first full-length novel, Jal gara, seokeoseu (잘 가라, 서커스 Adieu, Circus). In 2013, Cheon was selected as the first Korean participant in the Korea-Spain Writer Residence Exchange Program. While in Spain, she read Don Quixote and traveled the country searching for food that appears in the novel, which became the basis for her essay collection Donkihoteui siktak (돈키호테의 식탁 Don Quixote`s Table). Back in Seoul, Cheon opened a Spanish restaurant called La Table del Quixote and ran it for two years. She published a collection of essays inspired by the experience, Sseugo dalkomhan jigeop (쓰고 달콤한 직업 A Bittersweet Job). Cheon has authored the short story collections Baneul, Myeongnang (명랑 Cheerful), Geunyeoui nunmul sayongbeop (그녀의 눈물 사용법 How She Uses Her Tears), Eommado asidasipi (엄마도 아시다시피 As You Know, Mom) and the novels Jal Gara, Seokeoseu and Saenggang (생강 Ginger). She is the recipient of the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature (2003) and the Annual Arts Award (2004).

2. Writing

Cheon’s stories depart significantly from such thematic concerns as love, extra-marital affairs, and urban or middle-class sensibilities that characterized many of the fictional works by women in the 90s. The women in Cheon’s fictional world are defined not by their reaction to the traditional views of women but by their hedonistic tendencies and the feral, primeval instincts they possess. Such a vision of womanhood is often expressed through visceral and visually shocking images. `Sum` (숨 Breath) features an old woman who works at a butcher’s shop and relishes every part of the cows she dresses out for sale. She eats pieces of raw cow brain as a delicacy; she believes liver is a cure for dizziness and entrails, for indigestion. Her love for meat is taken to its grotesque extreme when she begins hankering for the taste of cow fetus. In `Baneul,` the protagonist is a tattooist who enjoys watching the first drop of blood oozing from skin. Female aggression embodied in the act of tattooing is contrasted against emasculated manhood symbolized by a monk whose murder provides the mystery that drives the narrative forward. Cheon locates the source of such aggression in the prolonged state of oppression, alienation or fear. In `Dangsinui bada`(당신의 바다 Your Ocean), violent images of writhing eels being skinned alive accentuate the protagonist’s feeling of abandonment due to his father’s absence. Aggressive, animalistic behaviors are a defense mechanism triggered by the harsh reality, Cheon tells us. The main strategy of Cheon`s writing is to unveil issues in Korean society by fictionalizing the process of overturning traditional values and discovering identity through these characters. She is credited with introducing new feminist aesthetics with unique female characters, while paying attention to existential solidarity.

Domestic Awards 국내 수상 내역

Awarded for the 2003 신동엽창작상
Awarded for the 2004 올해의 예술상

Works 작품

Translations 번역서