Recipient of the 2025 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
Kim Jiyeon made her debut winning the Munhak Dongne New Writer’s Award in 2018 for her short story, "Jakjeonggi" (작정기 Records of Garden Making). The story was unanimously voted as "living up to the different tastes and standards of all seven judges." She has since won the 12th and 13th Munhak Dongne Young Writer’s Award for the short stories "Saranghaneun il" (사랑하는 일What It Means to Love) and "Gongwoneseo" (공원에서 At the Park), respectively. Her first collection of short stories, Maeumedo eomneun sori (마음에도 없는 소리 You Don’t Mean It), was published in 2022.
2. Writing
Kim's work depicts the lives of female characters of all different guises and walks of life. There are women who love women, women who live outside of Seoul, women who present as male. Her stories provide food for thought on how the female identity is thrown into flux when it comes up against life. Kim's characters are notable for continuing to embrace life despite their encounters with hatred or violence. Her quiet prose that maintains its pace throughout the narrative mirrors the author's stance towards life and the events that surround her characters. Of particular interest is the author's signature humor on display when writing dialogue, which perfectly captures the emotional relationships of the characters.Out of the works published in Maeumedo eomneun sori, which collects the author's stories written from 2015 to 2022, Kim mentions that her favorite scene is when the characters weep in "Naega ulgi sijakal ttae" (내가 울기 시작할 때 When I Start Weeping), the first story written in the collection. Kim has compared writing to weeping before, and that she writes with the hope in mind that no one should be left to weep by themselves. Such affection for others, for memories, and life in general is palpable in Kim's work. A defining characteristic of her work is the meeting of past reminiscences and premonitions about one's present state and the future. Without resorting to radical experimentation, Kim is lauded for her tightness of structure and mastery of quotidian emotion through sentences that internalize the character's circumstances. According to the author, however, she only plots out her stories loosely in terms of beginning, middle, and end, preferring to sketch in the rest freely.
Reference
Profile information provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
LTI Korea 
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