Suji Kwock Kim

Suji Kwock Kim (born 1969) is a Korean American poet-playwright.

Life

She graduated from Yale College; the Iowa Writers' Workshop; Seoul National University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar; and Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow.^[1]

Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, SLATE, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review and on National Public Radio, reprinted in 24 anthologies, and translated into Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic, and Bengali.^[2]

Music and theatre

Choral settings of her poems, composed by Mayako Kubo for the Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, Chorusorganisation, Koreanische Frauengruppe Berlin, and Japanische Fraueninitiative Berlin, premiered at Pablo Casals Hall, Tokyo in December 2007. Vocal settings of her work, composed by Jerome Blais, premiered at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and were recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in March 2007.

She is collaborating on an opera with the composer Mark Grey for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, and is co-author of Private Property, a multimedia play showcased at Playwrights Horizons (NY), produced at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK), and featured on BBC-TV.

Awards

• Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, 2012
• George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, 2011 and 2012
• Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters ^[3]
• Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets
• Bay Area Book Reviewers Award
• Griffin Poetry Prize International shortlist
• 2006 Whiting Award ^[4]
• The Nation/ Discovery Award
• National Endowment for the Arts grant
• Blakemore Foundation for Asian Studies grant
• Association of Asian American Studies grant
• Korea Foundation grant
• Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission grant

Works

• Notes from the Divided Country. Louisiana State University Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8071-2873-2.
• Private Property (multimedia play, Edinburgh Festival Fringe)
• Opera with Mark Grey, TBD (libretto; Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, forthcoming)
• "hwajon," "Flight," "Looking at a Yi Dynasty Rice Bowl" (texts for choral compositions by Mayako Kubo, Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, 2007)
• "Occupation," "Fragments of the Forgotten War," "Montage with Neon" (texts for compositions for voice and piano by Jerome Blais, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2007)

Anthologies

• "American Religious Poetry," ed. Harold Bloom. (Library of America, 2007)
• "American War Poetry: 1794-2004," ed. Lorrie Goldensohn. (Columbia University Press, 2006)
• "Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation." (University of Illinois Press, 2004)
• Backpack Literature, ed. Dana Gioia (Longman, 2006)
• Berliner Anthologie (Alexander Verlag, in association with Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin, 2006)
• Century of the Tiger: 20th Century Korean Literature (University of Hawaii Press, 2003)
• Contemporary American Poetry (Penguin, 2004)
• Contemporary American Poetry in Russian Translation (OSI, Moscow, 2008, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts and U.S. Embassy in Russia)
• "Crossing State Lines" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)
• Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writing (Temple University Press, 2003)
• The Future Dictionary of America, ed. Dave Eggers and Vendela Veda (McSweeney's, 2004)
• The Griffin Prize Anthology. (House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 2004)
• Inside Literature. (Longman, 2007)
• An Introduction to Poetry. (Longman, 2012)
• "Language for a New Century: Contemporary Voices from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond." (Norton, 2008)
• "Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century." (Sarabande, 2006)
• Lineas Conectadas: Nueva Poesia de los Estados Unidos (Sarabande, 2006, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts and U.S. Embassy in Mexico)
• Literature: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin, 2007)
• Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing (Longman, 2012)
• A Mingling of Waters (Supernova P&D Pvt. Ltd., Kolkata, India, 2008, in association with the U.S. Embassy in India, USKLE, and 2008 Kolkata Book Fair)
• "The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators and Waiting Rooms." (Picador, 2004)
• Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (Penguin, 2004)
• Poetry For Students (Thomson Gale, 2006)
• Poetry On Record, 1888-2006: 98 Poets Read Their Work (Shout Factory/ Sony BMG Music, 2006)
• Poetry 30 (University of West Virginia Press, 2005)
• "The Koreas," Charles Armstrong (Routledge, 2006)

References

1. Academy of American Poets profile
2. PEN Member profile
3. 2007 American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards announcement
4. http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/suji-kwock-kim#/

External links

• Suji Kwock Kim Website
• National Public Radio interview
• "Poet's Choice", Washington Post, Robert Pinsky, August 27, 2006
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
• 2005 University of California at Berkeley video clip
• National Book Festival (Library of Congress) profile and video clip
• "Writing In the New Year; New Year at the Demilitarized Zone". New York Times. December 31, 2003.