Jo Kyung-ran
Life. Jo Kyung Ran was born in Seoul in 1969 where she went on to study creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, but did not decide to become a writer until she turned 28. Jo lived in Bonngcheon-dong for nearly 20 years in a small rooftop apartment which her father built for her. She made her literary debut in 1996 with the short story, French Optical which won the Donga-Ilbo Prize. Internationally famous, she is a speaker in demand for conferences, having appeared at “Beyond Borders: Translating and Publishing Korean Literature in  the U.S.” in New York in 2009 and more recently at The Seoul International Forum for Literature 2011. Work. Jo's work is famous for taking trivial, mundane, and everyday occurrences and delicately describing them in subtle emotional tones. LTI Korea describes her contributions to Korean Literature: Her work has won the Munhakdongne New Writer Award, the Today's Young Artist Award, The Contemporary Literature Award (for the 2003 novella A Narrow Gate), and the Dong-in Literary Award(2008). Her work has been translated into French, German, Hebrew and English. External links. An interview with the author (in English and  Korean) can be found at KTLIT: Video bilingual interview of Jo Kyung Ran (“Tongue”) by Krys Lee (“Drifting House”)