Han Kang

(born in 1970) – award-winning Korean writer and poet, whose books have been translated into numerous languages. She was born in Gwangju and currently lives in Seoul. She studied Korean Studies at Yonsei University. Her debut was released in 1993 in the literary magazine Munhak kwa sahoe ("Literature and Society") with the poem Winter in Seoul. A year later, she won the top prize in the Sǒul Sinmun’s ("Seoul Newspaper") for her short story The Scarlet Anchor. She also wrote several novels, including Love of Yeosu (1995), The Black Deer (1998), and Your Cold Hand (2002). Her most famous work is The Vegetarian: A Novel (2007), which brought Kang and her translator Deborah Smith the 2016 International Booker Prize. It is a polyphonic story, which sparingly uses its means of expression, yet offers many ambiguous interpretations – it touches upon the important theme of mental self-destruction of a human being. In 2013, she published a collection of poetry entitled I Put The Evening In The Drawer. Her latest book The White Book (2018), written during a literary residency in Warsaw, was nominated for the Booker Prize.It's a strongly autobiographical mix of poetry and prose in which the writer tries to cope with the loss of an older sister who died before she was born.