Kim Hyesoon

Kim Hyesoon is a poet, essayist, and critic from South Korea. She was the first woman-identifying poet to win the Midang Literature Award, which she received in 2006.

Kim Hyesoon’s poetry collection Phantom Pain Wings, translated from Korean by Don Mee Choi (New Directions, 2023), was a highlighted Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. Her other collections include Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), Poor Love Machine (Action Books, 2016), I’m OK, I’m Pig! (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), and All the Garbage of the World, Unite!(Action Books, 2011). 

Her work has been translated into many languages, including Swedish, French, German, Polish, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Danish. In 2023, Kim Hyesoon and translator Don Mee Choi gave the T.S. Eliot Memorial Reading at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. 

She has received multiple literary prizes, including the Samsung Ho-Am Prize, UK Royal Society of Literature International Writer Award, Cikada Prize, Lee Hyoung-Gi Literary Award, Griffin Poetry Prize, Daesan Poetry Award, Sowol Poetry Award, and Kim Su-Yong Literary Award.

Kim Hyesoon lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.