2019 Sejong Writing Competition

Judges

Sijo Judges: Gyung-ryul Jang | David McCann | Mark Peterson
Essay Judges: Molly Gaudry | Lee Herrick | Christine Lee

 

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. Dr. Jang is now professor 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 two books of critical essays in sijo poetry: Poetics of Temporality: Toward a New Understanding of Sijo Poetry (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 2013); and What Does Change and What Should Not Change: Critical Essays in Sijo Poetry (Seoul: Literary Notebook Pub. Co., 2017). 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. David translated the poems included in the collection The Temple of Words: An Anthology of Modern Korean Buddhist Poetry published by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Seoul, in 2017.

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Mark Peterson

sijo

Mark Peterson (Professor Emeritus of Korean history, literature and language, Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT) received B.A.'s 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 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. 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 served as past editor-in-chief for the Korea Journal, published by UNESCO in Korea, from 2015 to 2017. Currently he is working with a research center he founded called The Frog Outside the Well Research Center.

Molly Gaudry

essay

Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil. In 2018, Ampersand Books will release its sequel, Desire: A Haunting. Molly is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, she teaches at the Yale Writers' Workshop, and she is the founder of Lit Pub.

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Lee Herrick

essay

Lee Herrick is the author of three books of poems, Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, including Columbia Poetry Review, The Poetry Foundation, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice and Here: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama. With Leah Silvieus, he is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (forthcoming in Spring 2020 by Orison Books). Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States, he served as Fresno Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and teaches at Fresno City College and the MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.

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Christine Lee

essay

Born in New York City, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee is the author of the memoir Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Zyzzyva, Guernica, the Rumpus, and BuzzFeed, among other publications. Her novel, The Golem of Seoul, is forthcoming from Ecco / Harper Collins.

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