2017 Sejong Writing Competition

Judges

Sijo Judges: Gyung-ryul Jang | David McCann | Mark Peterson
Essay Judges: Anne Holzman | Angela Hur | Junse Kim

 

Gyung-ryul Jang

sijo

Gyung-ryul Jang received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Seoul National University, Korea, and his Ph.D. degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin. While he was a graduate student of the University of Texas at Austin, he published an article on Ezra Pound’s poetry in Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship, and his essay, “The Imagination Beyond and Within Language: An Understanding of Coleridge's Idea of Imagination,” appeared in Studies in Romanticism. Dr. Jang taught English literature until 2018, and is now Professor Emeritus of English at Seoul National University. He has contributed numerous articles on contemporary literary theory and Korean literature to various literary journals in Korea. He has recently published a critical study of sijo poetry: Poetics of Temporality: Toward a New Understanding of Sijo Poetry (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2013). Some other recent publications are as follows: Joy of Reading Poetry: A Critical Reading of Contemporary Korean Poetry (Seoul: Literary Notebook Pub. Co., 2014); What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen: Essays in Korean Literature (Seoul: Moonji Pub. Co., 2016); Somewhere Between Insight and Blindness: Critical Essays in Contemporary Korean Literary Trend (Seoul: Munhakdongne Pub. Group, 2017); and Is it a Petal or a Butterfly?: Essays in Korean Sijo and Japanese Haiku and Tanka (Seoul: Lyric Poetry & Poetics Pub. Co., 2017).

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David McCann

sijo

David McCann taught Korean literature at Harvard University until his retirement in 2014. He particularly enjoyed teaching his class Writing Asian Poetry, a creative writing class exploring the Classical Chinese, Japanese haiku, and Korean sijo forms for English-language poetry. His more recent books include Urban Temple, a collection of his English-language sijo poems from Bo-Leaf Press in 2010, published in a dual-language, Korean and English edition by Changbi Publishers in Seoul in 2012; Slipping Away, a Korean p’ansori-style narrative poem from Finishing Line Press, a chapbook published in 2013; and Same Bird, new and selected poems from Moon Pie Press in 2016. One of his haiku poems published in Acorn haiku journal received The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award in 2014 and is included in Haiku 2015, from Modern Haiku Press. He has been translating a collection of modern Korean Buddhist poems in a project sponsored by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism.

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Mark Peterson

sijo

Mark Peterson (Professor of Korean literature and language, Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT) received his B.A. in Asian Studies and Anthropology from Brigham Young University in 1971. He received his M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1987, both from Harvard University in the field of East Asian Languages and Civilization. Prior to coming to BYU in 1984 he was the director of the Fulbright program in Korea from 1978 to 1983. He also served as the President of the Korea Pusan Mission from 1987 to 1990. He has been the coordinator of the Asian Studies Program and was the director of the undergraduate programs in the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. He is currently the head of the Korean section of the department. Dr. Peterson is a member of the Association for Asian Studies, where he was formerly the chair of the Korean Studies Committee; was also the book review editor for the Journal of Asian Studies for Korean Studies books. He is also a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, the International Association for Korean Language Education, the International Korean Literature Association, and the American Association of Korean Teachers. He is currently editor-in-chief for the Korea Journal, published by UNESCO in Korea.

Anne Holzman

essay

Anne Holzman holds a B.A. with Honors in English from Oberlin College and an MFA in Writing from Hamline University. She is a nationally published freelance writer with essays in the anthologies Lost Classics and Am I Teaching Yet? She has worked as an editor for the Pioneer Press newspaper and Redleaf Press book publisher and has taught high school English and journalism. She writes regularly about the arts for Korean Quarterly.

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Angela Hur

essay

Angela Hur received a B.A. in English from Harvard University and an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction from Notre Dame, where she won the Sparks Fellowship and the Sparks Prize, a postgraduate fellowship. Her debut novel The Queens of K-town was published by MacAdam/Cage in 2007. It has been assigned in Korean diaspora literature classes at U.C. Berkeley, University of British Columbia, and University of Seoul. She's been published in KoreAm Journal and The Korea Times. Excerpts from her novel-in-progress Folklorn have been published in Harvard's Azalea, Journal of Korean Literature and Stockholm University's Two Thirds North. She read excerpts of Folklorn as a featured panelist for PEN USA's "Faces of Korean Storytellers," and as a featured panelist at the University of British Columbia's Korean Literature Translation Workshop. She was a tenured editor for Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and she taught English Literature and Creative Writing as a fulltime lecturer at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in Seoul, Korea.

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Junse Kim

essay

Junse Kim, M.F.A. from Goddard College, is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University’s MFA Program. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Faulkner Short Story Award, and the Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. His fiction and creative nonfiction has been published in Ontario Review, ZYZZYVA, Cimarron Review, Fourteen Hills, as well as two anthologies: Pushcart Prize XXVII and Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writing.

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