This year's Seoul International Writers' Festival will run from Sept. 8-13 on Nodeulseom Island. Shown is a scene from last year's event at Seoul Community Cultural Center Seogyo in Seoul's Mapo-gu District. (Festival's official Facebook page)

By Lee Jihae

Seoul from early next month will host an annual event attracting 24 noted domestic and foreign writers on Nodeulseom Island in the capital's Yongsan-gu District.

The Literature Translation Institute (LTI) of Korea on Aug. 28 announced its hosting of this year's Seoul International Writers' Festival from Sept. 8-13 on Nodeulseom.

Launched in 2006, the global event seeks to expand reader literary experiences and lay the foundation for exchange of Korean and foreign literature in Seoul.

Under this year's theme "Crossing the Bridge of Language," the festival will have 10 writers from nine countries attend, including Yu Hua, whom the LTI called "one of the foremost writers of contemporary Chinese literature," and British author Bernardine Evaristo, who in 2019 became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize.

Fourteen domestic writers will attend including Eun Heekyung and Choi Eunyoung.

On the opening day of Sept. 8, Yu and Korean writer Jeong Ji A will give lectures on the festival's theme at Nodeulseom Live House and give their opinions of the presentation and writing their works. Yu, Mo Yan and Yan Lianke, who are deemed leading writers of contemporary Chinese literature, all mark their 40th anniversaries in writing this year.

Jeong's novel "Father's Liberation Diary" vividly portrays the ordeals of modern Korean history over the past 70 years after liberation from Japanese rule. The writer is considered to have enabled reconciliation of clashing ideologies and eras through her book.

From Sept. 9-13, Korean and foreign writers will discuss one on one serious social topics through literary works and languages.

Writers Jin Eun-young and Evaristo will discuss social disasters and minorities, while Eun and Andrew Porter of the U.S. will discuss memories and time. Kim Keum Hee and Brazilian American writer Martha Batalha, Lim Solah and Djaili Amadou Amal of Cameroon, and Jeon Sungtae and Ahmed Saadawi of Iraq will discuss caregiving, solidarity, hatred, youth and labor.

Writers of other nationalities will attend forums. Kim Heesun, Hwang Mogua and Karin Tidbeck of Sweden, who wrote "The Memory Theater," which made the 2021 New York Times list of the best science fiction and fantasy books, on Sept. 9 will attend a forum on the fiction genre.

Park Sang Young, whose novel "Love in the Big City" was nominated for the International Booker Prize last year, poet Baek Eunsun and British writer Olivia Laing will discuss the joy and pain of creating art.

Exhibitions and performances will also be held over the festival period.

Pansori (traditional lyrical opera) singer Kim Joon-soo from the National Changgeuk Company of Korea on Sept. 8 will perform at the opening ceremony. The exhibition "Through Readers' Eyes" from Sept. 2 will be held at Nodeul Gallery on Nodeulseom, showcasing typographies representing each participating writer at the festival.

A pansori performance reinterpreting the works of Yu and Jeong will run from Sept. 9-10 at Nodeul Live House.

More information is on the festival's official website (www.siwf.or.kr) and its Instagram account (@siwf_insta). The events are free but require online reservations. 

This is a promotional poster for this year's Seoul International Writers' Festival. (LTI Korea)