Kyung Hye-won(경혜원; born April 16, 1981) is a South Korean picture book author and illustrator. Her representative works include Elevator, Dinosaur X-Ray, Bigger Than You, I’m a Lion, and My Big, Secret Friend. She won the Taiwan Open Book Award in 2018 for Dinosaur X-Ray.

Early life and education 
Kyung Hye-won was born in the city of Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. She majored in English Language and Literature at Myongji University. She showed interest and talent in drawing from an early age, and studied illustration in college.

Career 
Kyung has worked as an illustrator since 2004, mainly providing illustrations for children's books. She published her first picture book, Special Friends, in 2014. Her representative works include Elevator, Dinosaur X-Ray, Bigger Than You, I’m a Lion, and My Big, Secret Friend. Since many of her picture books are dinosaur-themed, she is also known as a "dinosaur author" to children in Korea. 

Her work with Dinosaur X-Ray won the Taiwan Open Book Award in 2018. Copyrights to her work have been exported to Taiwan, Mexico, Russia, and France. Bigger than You (2018) was first published by HarperCollins, an American publisher, and then exported back to Korea. She has been represented by BookStop Literary Agency in the U.S. since she participated in the 2016 Bologna International Children's Book Fair.

Style 
Kyung Hye-won's first book, Special Friends, was inspired by children's love of dinosaurs. The book depicts an imaginary world where dinosaurs accompany the main character on his way home from school. Dinosaurs have been a main theme in Kyung's books ever since the publication of Special Friends. In Elevator, she depicts the neighbors a girl encounters in the elevator as dinosaurs. In Thump, Thump, she presents a world where family members turn into dinosaurs and join other dinos in play. In My Big, Secret Friend, a dinosaur fills the gaping absence left by a girl's sick mother. In Dinosaur X-ray, winner of the Taiwan Open Book Award, she uses x-ray illustrations to highlight the various characteristics of different dinosaurs. She depicts dinosaurs as friendly, adorable creatures, through collages of mixed media including pens, oriental paints, watercolor, and pencils. With I’m a Lion (2021), Kyung attempted a different drawing style from her previous work; the book features realistic depictions of a lioness. Korean traditional paper (hanji), ink, and digital drawing were used to render the shape and texture of the lions with a three-dimensional feel.

Personal life 
She lives with her husband in the city of Hanam in Gyeonggi-do.

Awards 
 2018 Dinosaur X-Ray, Taiwan Open Book Best Children's Book

Works 
 2022 Me, the T-Rex, and Christmas (Munhakdongne)
 2022 My Big, Secret Friend (Changbi)
 2021 I'm a Lion (BIR)
 2020 Thump, Thump (Sigong Junior)
 2022 冬冬 (Kanghao,Taiwan)
 2020 The Candle Book (Woongjin Junior)
 2021 蟠燭書 (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2020 Go Back Inside the Egg! (Hanlim)
 2021 到你的劉壽負裡! (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2019 I'm Taller Than You! (BIR)
 2020 化你更高! (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2020 Je suis plus grand que toi! (Rue du Monde, France)
 2018 Bigger Than You (HarperCollins)
 2018 Bigger Than You (Hallim, Korea) from the USA original Bigger Than You
 2017 Just One Bite (Hanlim)
 2018 給我吃一口! (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2017 Dinosaur X-Ray (Hanlim)
 2018  恐龍X光 (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2020 L’hôpital des dinosaures (Éditions Versant Sud,Belgium)
 2020 ДИНОЗАВРЫ НА РЕНТТЕН! (Rosman,Russia)
 2016 Elevator (Sigong Junior)
 2016 Elevador (Océano Travesía, Mexico)
 2017 電梯 (Kanghao, Taiwan)
 2014 Special Friends (Sigong Junior)
 2018 特別的朋友們 (Kanghao, Taiwan)

Activities 
 2022 Participated in "Korean Picture Books: Fantasy in Everyday Life” seminar for Hong Kong primary and secondary school students at the Hong Kong Book Fair
 2022 Participated in "Meet Author Kyung Hye-won" held at Mu Kuang English School in Kwun Tong, under the aegis of the Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong
 2022 Collaborated in the Mighty Wonders exhibition with ceramic artists
 2017 53rd Group Exhibition at the Amway Museum of Art, Picture Books at the Museum (Exhibiting artists: Kyung Hye-won, Kim Myeong-seok, Lee Gi-hun, Lee Myung-ae, Lee Seok-gu, Jung Jinho)

References

External links 
 http://bookstopliterary.com/illustrators/hyewon-kyung.html
 https://klwave.or.kr/klw/authors/201242/authorsView.do
 https://k-book.or.kr/user/authors/authors_view?idx=2136

Living people
1981 births
21st-century South Korean artists
South Korean children's book illustrators
South Korean illustrators
South Korean women children's writers
People from Suwon