The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has announced that South Korea will participate as the "Country of Focus" of this year's Brisbane Writers Festival. In collaboration with the Korean Cultural Center Australia, the festival will take this opportunity to showcase the dynamic and captivating world of Korean literature to the world from May 10th to 14th, 2023 in Brisbane, Australia.
The Brisbane Writers Festival, which boasts a long history of 61 years and features more than 160 events during its run in May each year, is a large-scale literary festival. For the second year, the festival presents its Country of Focus program, an initiative highlighting the dynamic literature of the Indo-Pacific region. Situating Australian writing within a geopolitical context, Country of Focus emphasises the exchange of ideas across language, culture and geography and the critical role of literature in an interconnected modern world.
This year, the festival is inviting some extraordinary South Korean talents, beginning with the incredible children’s book illustrators Gihun Lee and JiHyeon Lee, then expanding to include some of the most exciting and subversive voices in South Korean literature: the experimental Bae Suah; neoromantic Sang Young Park; feminist poet Kim Min Jeong; polymathic Krys Lee; and literary luminary Bora Chung. Their astonishing work probes the psychological disquiet of modernity through radical formal innovation and devastating intimacy. These are extraordinary South Korean artists and stories. They are stories that particularise the universal, reminding us of the enduring power of literature – to expose how we suffer and how we find salvation.
Melissa Bates, the CEO of the Brisbane Writers Festival, expressed her enthusiasm for the festival's Country of Focus program this year, stating that "South Korea has captured attention for its rich and diverse cultural aspects, and literature is cetrainly one of them. With the dynamic and diverse landscape of Korean literature, we expect this year's Country of Focus program will be exciting."
*Brisbane Writers Festival website: https://bwf.org.au/2023-festival/country-of-focus-south-korea
<Brisbane Writers Festival Country of Focus Program>
