Suki Kim

Suki Kim
At Miami Book Fair International, Nov. 2015
Born	Seoul, South Korea
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Columbia University
Genre	novel, essay
Notable works	The Interpreter, Without You, There is No Us
Notable awards	PEN Beyond Margins Award Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
Website
SukiKim.com

Suki Kim is a Korean American writer, a 2006 Guggenheim fellow and the author of the award winning novel The Interpreter and a New York Times Bestselling literary nonfiction about her undercover investigation in North Korea, ''Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite''

Biography and work

Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea. She emigrated to the United States with her family when she was 13, moving to the outer boroughs of New York City.^[1] Kim is a naturalized American citizen.

Kim graduated from Barnard College with a BA in English and a minor in East Asian Literature. Kim also lived in London for several years, studying Korean literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She received a Fulbright Research Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Open Society Foundations Fellowship.

Her debut novel, The Interpreter, is a murder mystery about a young Korean American woman, Suzy Park, living in New York City and searching for answers as to why her shopkeeper parents were murdered. Kim took a short term job as an interpreter in New York City when working on the novel to look into the life of an interpreter.^[2] The book received positive critic reviews^[3] and won the PEN Beyond Margins Award and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award and was a finalist for a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Interpreter was translated into Dutch, French, Korean, Italian, and Japanese.

Kim visited North Korea in February, 2002, to participate in the 60th Birthday Celebration of Kim Jong-il and wrote a cover essay for the New York Review of Books^[4]

Kim accompanied the New York Philharmonic in February, 2008, when they traveled to Pyongyang for the historical cultural visit to North Korea from the United States. Her article, “A Really Big Show: The New York Philharmonic’s fantasia in North Korea” was published in Harper's Magazine in December, 2008.^[5]

Her latest book, Without You, There Is No Us, is a work of literary nonfiction about her six months undercover in North Korea, teaching English to the future leaders of the country at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.^[6]

Kim appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on December 10, 2014

Works

Essays & Op Eds

• "The Good Student in North Korea", The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 2014
• "The Dear Leader's Heinous Act" The New York Times, Op Ed, December 17, 2013
• "The Shared Wound in Korea", The New York Times, Op Ed, February 13, 2013
• "Forced from Home and Yet Never Free of it" The New York Times, December 3, 2010
• "Notes from Another Credit Card Crisis", The New York Times, Op Ed, March 18, 2009
• "Globalizing Grief", The Wall Street Journal, Op Ed, April 24, 2008
• "Great Leadership", The Wall Street Journal, Op Ed, October 16, 2007
• "Asia's Apostles", The Washington Post, Op Ed, July 25, 2007
• "Our Affair Was One Long Lesson in How to Break Up", The New York Times, September 24, 2006
• "Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl's Habits", The New York Times, November 21, 2004
• "Marriage of Inconvenience?", The New York Times, June 22, 2003
• "Korea's New Wave", The New York Times, Op Ed, March 10, 2003
• "Translating Poverty and Pain", The New York Times, March 02, 2003

Novels

• The Interpreter (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 2003

Non-fiction

• Without You, There Is No Us; My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite (Crown, 2014)

See also

• List of Asian American writers

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Suki Kim.

• Suki Kim at TED
  • https://www.ted.com/talks/suki_kim_this_is_what_it_s_like_to_go_undercover_in_north_korea?language=en