The Korean Cultural Service New York welcomes critically acclaimed novelist Kyung-sook Shin for a reading of her latest work to be published in America, I'll be right there (어디선가 나를 찾는 전화벨이 울리고).

Shin is a celebrated best-selling author and one of the most widely-read novelists in Korea. She has won a wide variety of prestigious literary awards including the Munye Joongang New Author Prize, the Today’s Young Artist Award from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Manhae Literature Prize, the Yi Sang Literary Award, and the Dong-in Literary Award among many others.

Please Look After Mom is Shin’s first book to appear in English and it has been met with critical acclaim; since it’s publication in 2009, it has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Shin became the first Korean and first woman to receive the Man Asian Literary Prize for the English translation of Please Look After Mom in 2011.

In her new, highly anticipated novel, I'll Be Right There, Shin delivers a moving story of love, friendship, and solitude of youth in the turbulent 1980's Korea. As she does so, Shin bridges the gaps of East and West by using European literature as an “interpreter of emotion.” Following the highly cultured character of Jung Yoon as she recounts the experiences of her formative years, we are able to glimpse how her childhood connects with her tumultuous college days and in turn, the relationships—both complex and fragile—that she has formed in her life.

Shin will be reading and presenting her work, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Reviews for I’ll Be Right There:

"Shin's perspective on relationships is nuanced; she doesn't shy away from what is complex, complicated or painful in everyday human connections...There is also vibrancy and richness in the lives of her characters, and an understanding of love and solitude that is universal." —Electric Literature

"Tender and mournful, the latest novel from best-selling South Korean novelist Shin (Please Look after Mom, 2011) considers young love and loss in an era of political ferment...Shin's uncomplicated yet allusive narrative voice delivers another calmly affecting story, simultaneously foreign and familiar." –Kirkus

"Shin can suggest profound implications in restrained detail, and though the story ends in tragedy, her frequent references to both Eastern and Western literature testify to the duty to hope and stay alive." —Publishers Weekly