Recipient of the 2026 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
"On that spring day/I couldn't help but wonder/if my fragile seventeen years might also shatter to pieces" —From "Spring" in I’m a High School Dropout (Changbi Edu, 2017)
Kim Aeran writes with sensitivity about the issues and emotions faced by teens, hitherto overlooked by the Korean writing establishment, not as another grownup but in their own candid voices.
1. Life
Kim Aeran was born in 1965 in a small village in Gwangju, Gyeonggi province, as the sixth of eight children. Reading her mother's matter-of-fact, frank journals inspired her to ponder what it means to write. Her first attempts at writing were at university, where she read various works as a Korean literature major. While still at graduate school, an essay she submitted on a whim to a publisher ended up as a book and she began to write in earnest. In 2005 she won the children's poetry category of the Hankook Ilbo New Writer's Contest for her poem "My Gran," after which she wrote children's poems, and in 2015 she won Grand Prize at the Changbi “Good Books for Children” Competition, after which she wrote children's fiction. Her current focus is writing poems for young adults.
2. Writing
Kim Aeran's poems present an unadorned face to teenage readers, written in accessible yet poignant language. The candid stories that emerge from this meeting could only be told by those living them. From out-of-school youth to single mothers and fathers, youth leaving care, working youth, and young carers, Kim is considered to have expanded the horizons of adolescent poetry in Korea, devoting herself to subjects hitherto largely unaddressed by the genre.
Reference
Hide-And-Seek With Dad 아빠와 숨바꼭질 (Sumai 섬아이, 2010)
Love Forecast: Cloudy but Clearing Up 사랑예보, 흐린 후 차차 맑음 (Garam Child 가람 어린이, 2011)
Get Up 일어나 (Crayonhouse 크레용하우스, 2011)
Give Me Back My Mom 엄마를 돌려줘 (I&BOOK 아이앤북, 2012)
Boom Goes the Boar, Bobble Goes the Pumpkin 멧돼지가 쿵쿵, 호박이 둥둥 (2015, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 창비)
I’m a High School Dropout 난 학교 밖 아이 (Changbi Edu 창비교육, 2017)
I Walked Just Like That 보란 듯이 걸었다 (Changbi Edu 창비교육, 2019)
Dubious Dating 수상한 연애담 (Happywood 행복한 나무, 2021)
Dad Ran Away 아빠가 가출했다 (I&BOOK 아이앤북, 2022)
Dream Odyssey 꿈 찾기 게임 (Happywood 행복한 나무, 2022)
I Experienced a Miracle at School 학교에서 기적을 만났습니다 (Prunsasang 푸른사상사, 2022)
School Dreams: What Am I Going to Do? 꿈꾸는 학교 ☆ 진로를 부탁해 (Happywood 행복한 나무, 2023)
Still Eighteen 열여덟은 진행 중 (Changbi Edu 창비교육, 2024)
Profile information provided by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
