Kim Bong-gon’s Author Talk and Q&A: 31st January 2026
Kim Bong-gon emerged at a moment when previously marginalised voices were reshaping South Korean literature. In 2016, the same year Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 ignited global conversations about gender and power, Kim Bong-gon became South Korea’s first openly gay novelist, introducing semi-autobiographical fiction that centred around the everyday life, desire, and interiority of a gay man.
His debut Auto won the Dong-A Ilbo New Writer’s Prize in 2016 and led to nominations for the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award and the Munhakdongne Young Writer’s Award.
Front cover of Summer Speed (2018) by Kim Bong-gon
Further information about Kim Bong-gon
Originally trained in film, Kim brings to his writing a cinematic attention to editing, temporality, and place. He learned early how slicing and rearranging time could create a new narrative rhythm; “a form of time-art” - a technique that continues to shape his prose. Seoul is not merely a backdrop, but a living geography threaded through his work, its neighbourhoods functioning as emotional and sensory anchors.
After postgraduate study in Creative Writing at the Korea National University of Arts, Kim embraced the tradition of the i-novel, crafting intimate, confessional narratives in which the boundary between author and protagonist is deliberately porous. Though initially criticised for defying conventional notions of fiction, Kim insists on this one-to-one encounter between writer and reader.
Venue: Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PB / Room: Performance Space, Ground Floor
Date: 2:30 - 4:30pm, Saturday 31st January 2026
Tickets/reservation:
> free
> email your full name, phone number, email address and number of seats required to k.queer.org@gmail.com