“I was pinching myself; ‘is this real?’” says Soo Jung Hyun as she recalls the late Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney speaking at the 2006 Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF), an event she’d been involved in organising. “Being able to be part of his visit was unreal.”
This feeling would well up again 16 years later in April 2022, when Hyun was appointed executive director of the festival, 15 years after she last worked there. Over a video call with in December 2022, her elation was palpable as she spoke about the 2023 festival featuring Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the 2022 Booker Prize. This is the second Booker Prize winner to attend in recent years; South African writer Damon Galgut attended the festival virtually in 2021. This year will also see National Book Award finalist Emily St John Mandel, whose work was adapted into an HBO Max series, in attendance.
