Poet Kim Hyesoon on April 23 was named an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (Moonji Publishing).

By Xu Aiying

Poet Kim Hyesoon is now an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The academy on April 23 released its list of 248 members to be inducted this year on its website. Kim is one of the eight newbies in the academy's Arts and Humanities section and the first Korean writer to get membership in the category.

The other seven in the section are all American including poet Kwame Dawes and playwright Katori Hall.

Launched in 1870 to develop the arts and sciences, the association has 14,500 members in five sections: math and physics; biology; sociology and ethology; humanities and arts; and leadership, policy and communication. New members are added every April via internal voting.

Most academy members are American but some are foreign honorary members. Among this year's 248 new members, 23 are foreign nationals.

Debuting in 1979 through Moonji Publishing, Kim won Canada's Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019 for her compilation "Autobiography of Death." Last year, she became the first Korean to receive a National Book Critics Circle Award of the U.S. for "Phantom Pain Wings."

The academy's induction ceremony for new members is slated for October in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

xuaiy@korea.kr