Literature
-
Okdongsik
Tuesday, June 2, 2026 | 6:00 PMWith a philosophy rooted in simplicity, precision, and balance, Chef Dongsik Ok has reframed traditional Korean comfort food through a minimalist and modern lens. His eponymous restaurant Okdongsik’s signature dish is an elegant yet deeply comforting pork broth, dwaeji gomtang. Since its launch in Seoul’s Seogyo-dong neighborhood in 2017, Okdongsik has earned critical acclaim and recognition with the Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand distinction for eight consecutive years, establishing it as one of Seoul’s premier... Read More -
Author Talks: Kim Choyeop & Anton Hur
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 | 5:00 PM- Youtube Video:
Author Photo: Melmel Chung In If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Korean science fiction superstar Kim Choyeop leads us to places we never thought we’d reach, imagining worlds galaxies away and unfamiliar lifeforms with near-dizzying humanity. A stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, Kim’s stories dismantle the borders between normal and abnormal, material and abstract, earthly and... Read More -
Across Languages: New Voices in Korean Poetry
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 | 6:30 PM- Youtube Video:
Across Languages: New Voices in Korean Poetry brings together acclaimed South Korean poets Lee Jenny, Yoo Heekyung, Oh Eun, and Shin Hae-uk with award-winning literary translators Archana Madhavan and Stine An, for a Korean–English bilingual reading and conversation to share the dynamism and innovations of language in Korean poetry culture. Through poetry and discussion, the speakers examine the cultural centrality of poetry in Korea and consider translation as a critical, creative practice that reshapes... Read More -
Author Talks: Bo-young Kim
Thursday, April 16, 2026 | 5:00 PM- Youtube Video:
Author Photo Credit: Hyun Seok “Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of cinematic art itself. Reminiscent of the world we experienced in Matrix, Inception, and Dark City, still it leads us to this entirely original structure, which is a ground-breaking, mystic literary and cinematic experience. Indeed, powerful and graceful.”—Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of ParasiteIn her mind-expanding work of speculative fiction, Bo-young Kim explores the driving forces of humanity—love, hope, creation, destruction,... Read More -
Korean Messiah with Jonathan Cheng
Monday, April 13, 2026 | 6:30 PM- Youtube Video:
Program Brief Korean Messiah In the launch event for Korean Messiah, Wall Street Journal China Bureau Chief Jonathan Cheng challenged conventional thinking around North Korea and described the surprising, enduring influence of American Presbyterian Christianity on Kim Il Sung's cult of personality. This program was hosted in collaboration with The Center for Korean Research at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Event Date: Monday, April 13, 2026 Host Organizations: The... Read More -
Author Talks: Kim Hana & Hwang Sunwoo
Tuesday, January 20, 2026 | 5:00 PM- Youtube Video:
Two Women Living Together, the bestselling Korean memoir by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo, is an insightful and heartwarming book that offers a fresh perspective on female friendship, chosen family, and the different ways one can make a “good” life. After years of living alone, Hana and Sunwoo, two single women in their forties, decided to pool their resources and buy an apartment together. What started as a practical arrangement blossomed into a profound partnership, a found family of two women and their four... Read More -
Author Talks: You-Jeong Jeong
Thursday, October 9, 2025 | 5:00 PM- Youtube Video:
Author Photo © Hong Jinwhan From master of crime and suspense fiction You-Jeong Jeong comes Perfect Happiness, a thrilling domestic nightmare.Everyone in Yuna’s life is desperate to keep her happy: her partners, parents, and terrified six-year-old daughter. Even when she’s not blaming or hitting, the threat of her mood keeps her family from bonding, touching, or even speaking long enough to realize she’s playing them against each other. But when little Jiyoo’s feverish memories of loons hint at a troubling crime,... Read More -
Ed Park: An Oral History of Atlantis with Mira Jacob
Thursday, September 4, 2025 | 6:30 PM- Youtube Video:
A deadpan, wildly imaginative collection of stories that slices clean through the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, An Oral History of Atlantis is the newest collection of short stories from Ed Park, the author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams.In this utterly original collection, characters question the fleetingness of youth and art, reckon with the consequences of the everyday, and find solace in the absurd, the beautiful, and the sublime.... Read More -
Author Talks: Cheon Seon-Ran
Tuesday, August 12, 2025 | 5:00 PM- Youtube Video:
SICA A bestseller in Korea, The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran is a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness. When four isolated elderly people die back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn't understand why she's the only one at her precinct that seems to care. But her colleagues at the police force dismiss the case as a series of unfortunate suicides due to the patients' loneliness. But Su-Yeon doesn't... Read More -
Julia Riew & Brad Riew @ The Strand
Tuesday, July 29, 2025 | 7:00 PMAuthor Photos Ramona Park & Marcos Ramirez Join us for an in-person event at The Strand with debut authors Julia Riew and Brad Riew for the release of their new novel The Last Tiger.Inspired by true stories from the authors’ grandparents’ lives during one of the darkest periods in Korean history, The Last Tiger is a young adult fantasy novel about the power of love to give voice to a broken people.In a colonized land where tigers are being hunted to extinction and ancient magic stirs, two star-crossed... Read More