Recipient of the 2026 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
I know, too./Some people get hit inside their home/and some people get hit outside.//That they're only waiting/with baited breath for things to quiet down.—From "For Things to Quiet Down" in Get Packing (Hyundae Munhak, 2020)
Lim Solah is a Korean poet and novelist.
1. Life
Lim Solah was born in 1987 in Daejeon. She began writing while working various part-time jobs after dropping out of high school, and lived at a temple in 2008 with the idea of joining a Buddhist order while continuing to write. After entering university in 2010 and becoming exposed to poetry, she began writing poems and fiction. A traffic accident in 2011 saw her focus shift to disability and the body. She made her literary debut in 2013 winning the poetry category of the Korea Joongang Daily New Writer’s Contest, and began making a name for herself as a novelist as well when her novel The Best Life won the 2015 Munhakdongne Collegiate Novel Award. In 2017, she was one of the key organizers of the With No References project set up to support victims of sexual violence in the literary sphere during the #MeToo movement. She participated in her first poetry reading performance at the 2024 Gwangju Biennale as part of Echoes in Pieces at the German Pavilion Open Stage.
2. Writing
At the forefront of Lim Solah's autobiographically-inspired work, the lives of female minorities raise questions on what constitutes normalcy. Her characters range from basic livelihood recipients to irregular women workers, unrecognized disabilities, lesbian seniors, and non-human characters like animals. These are "self-declared 'dropouts' who laugh in the face of society's narrow definition of 'a good life,' actors of resistance in search of life they can sustain" (Kim Eunha). Lim's first novel, The Best Life, is based on the author's experiences as a teen runaway. Not all runaways are created equal, however, and the novel grimly tracks down how the characters who set out to crash and burn together are fundamentally set apart by their class differences. This theme of characters temporarily thrown together yet who cannot exist in the same spheres remains a key motif in Lim's work. Her focus is not on the failure of such relationships per se, but in exposing the myriad layers of conditions ensuring this failure. In this, the author captures the invisible damage and imperceptible undoing sustained by the younger generation, excavating a new kind of ethics hitherto abandoned and repressed by the frame of morality.
Lim's first collection of poems, Grotesque Weather and Good People (winner of the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature), illustrates the layers of emotional sediment produced in the individual by insidious societal pressure. Her second collection of poetry, Get Packing, uses water as its key theme to show how rigid a world as seemingly formless as water can be, and how and what individuals try to protect within that world.
Reference
Poems
Grotesque Weather and Good People 괴괴한 날씨와 착한 사람들 (2017, Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사)
Get Packing 겟패킹 (2020, Hyundae Munhak Publishing Co., Ltd. 현대문학)
(Co-author) Thank Goodness I Have a Dog (공저) 나 개 있음에 감사하오 (2019, Achimdalbooks 아침달)
(Co-author) Send Us to the End of the World (공저) 우리를 세상의 끝으로 (2023, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네)
(Co-author) And So On (공저) 그 밖에 (2025, Workroom Press 워크룸프레스)
Short Stories
Snow, Man, and Snowman 눈과 사람과 눈사람 (2019, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네)
Saying It’s Nothing at All 아무것도 아니라고 잘라 말하기 (2021, Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사)
(Co-author) Short Stories on Love, Heartbreak, and Death (공저) 사랑, 이별, 죽음에 관한 짧은 소설 (2023, Delatime 시간의흐름)
(Co-author) A Fairly Solemn Face (공저) 제법 엄숙한 얼굴 (2023, Jakka Publishing Co., Ltd. 작가정신)
(Co-author) Electronic Forest: Running Further Away (공저) 전자적 숲; 더 멀리 도망치기 (2023, Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사)
Novellas
Like a Beast 짐승처럼 (2023, Hyundae Munhak Publishing Co., Ltd. 현대문학)
Novels
The Best Life 최선의 삶 (2015, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네)
I’m Still There 나는 지금도 거기 있어 (2023, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 문학동네)
Essays
Again, to the Backside 다시, 뒷면에게 (2025, Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. 문학과지성사)
Reference
권희철, <오늘의 날씨-임솔아 시집 『괴괴한 날씨와 착한 사람들』>, 문학동네 , 2017.
홍성희, <검은 돌의 문장들-임솔아론>, 동아일보 , 2020.
김은하, <능력주의 사회와 인간 실격 : 임솔아 소설에서 청년 여성의 이야기를 중심으로>, 人文學硏究 제 36집, 2021.
전청림, <사생아 엘렉트라-임솔아론>, 문학들 , 2022.
김다솔, <가장 밝은 세계를 등지는 힘-임솔아론>, 조선일보 , 2023.
강도희, <집, 아픈 몸, 망명 이후-임솔아론>, 문학동네 , 2024.
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