South Korean Poet Bae Suah

* Sponsored by the Penn Book Center

Join us for a reading and discussion with South Korean poet and novelist Bae Suah! Ms. Bae is on tour around the United States in advance of her participation in the PEN World Voices Festival in New York, and will be stopping in Philadelphia to present her newly-translated novel "A Greater Music" and her new poetry collection "Recitation."  

Winner of the Dongseo Literary Prize (2004) and the Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize (2003), Bae graduated from Ewha Womens University with a degree in Chemistry. At the time of her debut in 1993, she was a government employee working behind the embarkation/disembarkation desk at Gimpo Airport in Incheon. Without formal instruction or guidance from a literary mentor, Bae wrote stories as a hobby. But it wasn’t long before she left her stultifying job to become one of the most daringly unconventional writers to grace the Korean literary establishment in modern years.

Bae has departed from the tradition of mainstream literature and created her own literary world based on a unique style and knack for psychological description. Her work is regarded as unconventional in the extreme, characterized by tense-shifting and alterations in perspective. Her most recent works are nearly a-fictional, decrying characterization and plot.

For more information: http://www.pennbookcenter.com/event/south-korean-poet-and-novelist-bae-suah