Recipient of the 2026 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
Sang Young Park was born in Daegu, South Korea in 1988. He launched his writing career by winning the 2016 Munhakdongne New Writer’s Award for “Searching for Paris Hilton.” He is the author of the short story collection The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta (2018), the novel Love in the Big City (2019), Lie Like Lines(2021), and On Trust (2022), and the essay collection No Snacking Tonight (2020).
Love in the Big City, an international bestseller translated into more than twenty languages. The novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, and the Prix Médicis Étranger, and has been adapted into both a television series and a film, reaching audiences in over 190 countries worldwide. He has received major literary honors in Korea, including the Sin Dongyup Prize for Literature, the Heo Gyun Literary Award, the Young Writer Award (Grand Prize).
1. Life
Sang Young Park was born in Daegu in 1988. He studied French and journalism at Sungkyunkwan University and attended the creative writing master's program at Dongguk University. He worked as a magazine editor, copywriter, and consultant for seven years before debuting as a novelist. Park began his career by winning the 2016 Munhakdongne New Writers Award for "Paeriseu hilteuneul chatseumnida" (패리스 힐튼을 찾습니다 Searching for Paris Hilton), and published his short story collection The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta in 2018. His first novel, Love in the Big City, gained international recognition and was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize as well as other major literary awards.
2. Writing
Park debuted in 2016 with "Paeriseu hilteuneul chatseumnida," a short story about two narcissistic wannabe influencers that is markedly free of gravity and suffering. In the years since, he has become Korea’s best known queer writer domestically and abroad.
Love in the Big City, Park's first novel, is structured as a chain of linked novellas tracking the emotional life of its protagonist, Young, as he makes his way through a series of defining relationships over the course of his twenties, in Seoul: Jaehee, his straight female best friend in college; his mother, who is battling uterine cancer and is still in denial about her son’s sexuality; and Gyu-ho, a boyfriend whose sweetness keeps thwarting Young’s cynicism. A casual reader might be tempted to call it a Bildungsroman—except Young progresses only from the befuddlement and frustration of his late teens to the qualitatively different but quantitatively equal befuddlement and frustration of his late twenties.
The narrator can be flippant, even arch, about traumas other writers would turn into the focus of a whole novel. With exquisite timing, he deploys the classic queer coping mechanism of deflective irony, which is often absent from more classically engagé fiction. Park’s real stylistic achievement, though, consists of turning that cutting judginess into a first-person voice that’s deeper than its extremely entertaining quips.
Park’s characters are funny, and, in some sense, amused, even if their humor comes from a place of deep resentment. In a passage from "The Tears of an Unknown Artist," the protagonist, a semi-failed director, fumes helplessly while a dubious colleague is showered with praise. The anger burns, but is also very funny to read—its rhythmic blend of social critique with professional grudge. Park’s voice stands out for the way it repudiates the glamor of martyrdom for the insouciance of humor.
His work is widely praised for its sharp emotional insight, wit, and nuanced exploration of urban life, intimacy, and identity, and continues to attract a growing international readership and critical acclaim.
Reference
[1] Lee-Lenfield, Spencer. "Why so Serious?" The Yale Review, 16 May 2022. https://yalereview.org/article/sang-young-park-queer-fiction
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