The Seoul International Writers' Festival returns Sept. 11-16 at Ara Art Center in Jongno, Seoul, with 24 writers from 10 countries exploring the theme "Who Are We?" The Literature Translation Institute of Korea announced the program Monday, framing the question as a response to technology and global conflict.
The theme grows out of literature's long search for identity, according to organizers. Writers have asked "Who am I?" for centuries, and readers often reach for race, religion, or nation as shortcuts to an answer. Those categories, the festival's framing suggests, have not delivered - and the world faces more hatred and war than ever. So the festival turns the question outward.
"Unable to answer who 'I' is, we turn and ask, 'Who are you?'" organizers said.
Opening conversation and international lineup
Korean novelist Kim Ae-ran and Chilean author Benjamin Labatut will open the festival with a session called "We Are Someone." The conversation will cover "an exchange of warm yet incisive perspectives on understanding the self and accepting the other," according to the institute.
The overseas guest list includes South African novelist Damon Galgut, Japanese author Keiichiro Hirano, Canadian novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and German poet Uljana Wolf. Korean novelist Lee Hee-joo and American horror writer John Langan, who both attended the Quais du Polar crime fiction festival in Lyon in April, will reunite in Seoul.
The festival also crosses genres. Picture book authors Kim Hyo-eun and Beatrice Alemagna will appear together, and cartoonists Park Kun-woong and Zhou Jian-xin will discuss their work. A separate session pairs novelist Moon Ji-hyuk with translator Paige Morris to focus on translation's role in literary exchange.
Practical details
More than 20 programs will run across the six days, including one-on-one conversations between Korean and international authors, writer-translator discussions, and audience workshops. All events are free, offered both online and in person, with simultaneous interpretation in Korean and English.
Reservations are available through the festival's website and Naver Reservation.
LTI Korea President Chon Soo-young said the festival's purpose extends beyond the sessions themselves. "I hope the festival will become a place where writers and readers from different languages and cultures can better understand one another through literature while reflecting together on the value of our shared humanity," she said.
Why this matters for writers
For working writers, the festival offers a rare chance to watch how peers from different literary traditions approach the same problem: building a self on the page when the old categories have worn thin. The Kim-Labatut pairing is the clearest example - Kim's fiction often centers intimate Korean relationships, while Labatut writes about science and madness at the edges of knowledge. Their conversation, plus the writer-translator sessions, gives practical insight into how voice and identity translate across languages without flattening either.
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