Yi Kyoung-ja

Yi has won several awards including the 4th annual Han Mu-sook Literature prize in 1999, the 4th Goh-Jung-hee Literature Prize 2011, and in 2004 the Beautiful Writer's Prize which is awarded to older writers by younger ones.

Lee has also used the biographical format in her novels. In one of Lee's works, the reader is introduced to a heroine who had once been full of hope as a little girl, before being cast into tragedy and suffering after marriage, a transformation that Lee describes in minute detail. In the oral tradition that existed before the modern literary era, women verbally recounted their life stories. In the same fashion, narrators in Lee Kyung-ja's works tell us tales from long lives centered on marriage, birth, unfaithful husbands, family feuds, and other critical events. Lee's acclaimed and prize-winning works such as [Love and Hurt] (1998) and [Affection Never Withers] (1999) are good examples of the kind of work described above. Such stories present personal life history in a form that sheds light on modern Korean history magically interwoven with the individual.

One of her novels begins by introducing a married female protagonist who is fretting over the institution of marriage and her husband's indifference. The heroine ultimately ends her marriage after meeting another man, her true love. In Lee's works, most women domesticated under the institution of marriage but later reborn as 'warriors of love,' are originally middle-class housewives enjoying comfortable lives. Lee's full-length novel, [Waking up Alone in the Morning] (1993), is a work of this type.

One of the salient features of Lee's works is the flowing style of her sentences, which makes her writing fast-paced and readable whether it's a short story or full-length novel. It is within internal character dialogue, however, where her lively prose really shines. Lee often uses such dialogue as a means of revealing characters' conflicts and anguish. In these internal conversations, she uses authentic and colloquial language without excessive embellishment. Her novels feel genuine to readers due to the reality effect created by her natural use of everyday language. Even during the 1980s, when ideological discourse dominated literature, author Lee Kyung-ja's prose offered a sentimental view of women's experiences. It is misguided, however, to focus on the mere fact that she is a female author writing about women.

1948년 1월 28일 (강원도 양양) YI Kyoung-ja was born on January 28, 1948, in Yangyang, Gangwan-do, Korea. Yangyang is famous for its beautiful scenery and this gave Yi a strong attachment to nature from an early age. She graduated from Sorabol College of the Arts (Today Chung-Ang University) and began submitting her writing to annual spring literary contests at age 19, but not winning until 1973 when she won the Seoul Daily annual spring literary contest.