An image developed for the Seoul International Book Fair’s 2025 Guest of Honor Taiwan program. Key art by Croter Hung. Image: TAICCA
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
A US National Book Award Author Is in the Mix
As Korea’s Seoul International Book Fair celebrates its 70th anniversary, an 18-year exhibitor relationship with Taiwan will take center stage, June 18 to 22, when the Seoul fair with its 2025 slogan The Last Resort, meets Taiwan and its guest-of-honor title Taiwan Sensibility. If Taiwan Sensibility turns out to be Seoul’s Last Resort, the result will be nothing if not upbeat: The Taiwan delegation is coming with smiles.
Sometimes creativity does need a little explanation, and The Last Resort, as used by Seoul’s Korean Publishers Association to prepare its fair this year refers to “that one thing—an idea, a belief, a person—you turn to when times get tough, when you feel alone, when the world seems a little too heavy. … This year, we’re coming together to celebrate those things—the last resorts that sustain us. … Maybe, just maybe, by the time we turn the last page, we’ll find that the greatest last resort we have—is each other.”
With that as the conceptual basis of this public-facing fair itself, the show’s Guest of Honor Taiwan program arrives as an old friend—since 2008 a regular presence at the show—and is organized by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, better known is TAICCA (“Tike-ah”), with co-organization from the Taipei Bo0k Fair Foundation.
In its first time as guest of honor, Taiwan has chosen to honor the “dynamic and deeply connected exchanges across culture, history, publishing, and tourism” that Korea and Taiwan are “currently enjoying.”
And, like The Last Resort, the phrase Taiwan Sensibility means something specific in this context. Taiwan Sensibility, the guest of honor organizers tell us, “draws from a Korean expression that evokes Taiwan’s warmth, friendliness, and relaxed charm.”
And in its six thematic areas—literature, lifestyle, images, travel, food, and history—Taiwan will be inviting South Korean readers “to embark on a journey beginning with books and moving into a deeper appreciation of Taiwan’s cultural diversity and richness.”
At bottom, nothing in the advance materials around the guest of honor stint ahead suggests that Taiwan is heading for Seoul to perform a candlelit examination of its darkest and most profound literary traditions. That “sensibility,” instead—as you can see in the video produced for the show—is about myriad human endeavors amid bright colors amid swaggering music. This looks like a party.
Rex How’s Curation and Some Programming Highlights
The curatorial advisor of this happy program is Rex How, well known to many Publishing Perspectives readers and chair of Locus Publishing. As it turns out, Taiwan’s How was born in Korea’s Busan, so he crosses the frontier between these cultures with alacrity and sees the Taiwan Sensibility theme as an “opportunity for the Korean audience to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Taiwan.
Rex How
“This marks not only a new beginning but also opens space for more emotional and intellectual exchange—allowing each side to appreciate the unique qualities and shared values of the other.” And such a leading force in Taiwan’s cultural and publishing scene is How that what he says tends to be exactly what happens.
Croter Hung, the illustrator who has created the joyous iconic abundance of the island-themed key art for the show is contributing to a 360-square-meter pavilion (3,880 square feet), sees his rendition of Taiwan’s “architecture and streetscapes, nature and cities, characters and railways, history and everyday life all guiding readers into the multilayered cultural landscape of Taiwan.”
With 23 writers to put forward, there are at least 63 events planned for the guest of honor program of talks, panels, and hands-on workshops with three “forums” in place on June 19.
The 2024 US National Book Award-Winning Yáng Shuang-zi
While many of the authors being featured in the program may not yet be familiar to readers beyond Taiwan, one of them is Yáng Shuang-zi, whose Taiwan Travelogue from Graywolf Press in Lin King’s translation won the United States’ 2024 Translated Literature National Book Award on November 22 at the competition’s 75th awards ceremony in New York City.
As we pointed out in our coverage of her win, Yáng Shuang-zi (a pseudonym) writes manga, essays, fiction, and video-game scripts, as well as literary criticism. In addition to English, her work has been translated into Japanese and French. The Taipei-based translator and writer Lin King has won the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She translates from Mandarin and Japanese into English, and holds a BA from Princeton and an MFA from Columbia.
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ left, author of Taiwan Travelogue, with translator Lin King. Image: Nathalie Schueller
Programming highlights on June 19th include:
- At 10:30 a.m., it’s Beyond the Limits, Becoming a Global Citizen, a timely topic that turns out to be a Korean-language book launch by new work from How, himself; he’ll be in conversation with Suzy Lee.
- At 12 noon, Paws & Hearts: An Artistic Dialogue on the Human-Dog Connection follows.
- And at 2 p.m., it’s From Runaway to Homecoming: Queer Literature in Taiwan.
A look at Taiwan’s book market is set for 11 a.m. on June 20, and titled Inside Taiwan’s Book Market: Trends, Insights, and Opportunities.
And on June 21, the program will have a 5 p.m. event called Bites and Beasts: Unveiling the Colonial Past through Food and Fantasy,” a program said to focus on “how historical wounds are transformed into compelling storytelling.”
Having mentioned the party-like feel of the plans for this guest of honor program, we should note that there is just that, an opening party for Taiwan’s events, on June 18 at the stand at noon, with a live performance by Tsng-kha-lâng, a band led by Taiwan Literature Award-winner Ka-siông Tiunn.
In addition, the fair’s guest of honor program will mark a first appearance of Yes24, a pop-up bookstore at the Taiwan Pavilion, offering Korean-language editions of Taiwan books.
This, as the stand launches a “Taiwan Sensibility Passport” into which visitors must put the stamps of all six thematic zones to win gifts.
Below, a video spotlighting the Taiwan authors who are scheduled to appear at the Seoul International Book Fair.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Taiwan’s book publishing industry is here; more on the South Korean market is here; more on guest of honor programs at various fairs and trade shows is here, and more from us on international book fairs, trade shows, festivals, conferences, and other events is here.