A new literature award that aims to discover creators worldwide who write in the Korean language and examine the diaspora literature from diverse perspectives, has selected its winners, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea announced on Friday.
LTI Korea has awarded three writers -- Lee Soo-jeong, Chung Chul-young and Kim Jae-dong -- for the inaugural “‘Nomo New Literature Award,” selected from a total of 111 entries received between Nov. 14, 2022 and April 30 of this year, across three categories: novels, poetry and essays/non-fiction, representing 21 countries.
Lee, the winner of the novel category, moved to the US 20 years ago and has been involved in translations and writing. Chung, based in New Zealand, won in the poetry category with five poems he submitted. Essay writer Kim has resided in the US since 1998.
The three winners were announced following two rounds of deliberations. The jury consisted of 9 experts, with 3 specialists per category participating in the evaluation process.
"Nomo," meaning "beyond" in Korean, is also the name of the web magazine introduced by LTI Korea last year. Nomo offers in-depth analyses of the present state of Korean-language diasporic literature, new short stories, poems, essays and introduces works and writers of the diasporic literary canon. In addition to analyzing literature in Korean about the Korean diaspora, the magazine also seeks to discover new works not only by Korean nationals and ethnic Koreans, but also by foreign nationals writing in Korean, concerning diasporic issues and writing from around the world.
