Author Han Kang continues expanding international schedule with Avignon Festival feature

South Korean author and Nobel laureate Han Kang is maintaining an expanding international schedule this summer. Later this month, Han is scheduled to attend the Avignon Festival in France, where Korean has been designated the official guest language. She will meet readers on July 12, preceding a lecture-performance titled 'Oiseau' on July 15 and 16. The performance will feature French actress Isabelle Huppert and South Korean actress Lee Hye-young reading the opening chapter of her novel, We Do Not Part.

The Avignon appearance follows a series of notable international acknowledgements. In March, We Do Not Part—translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris—became the first work by a Korean author to win the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. The awarding body noted the novel's delicate depiction of the trauma stemming from the Jeju April 3 Incident, describing it as a meditation on creation and truth amid loss.

That same month saw the publication of her first English-translated nonfiction collection, Light and Thread, which incorporates her 2024 Nobel lecture alongside essays, poems, and diary entries. Her upcoming engagements reflect a sustained institutional demand for her work; she is slated to inaugurate the Berlin Philharmonic's new literary series in September.

Following her 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for poetic prose that confronts historical traumas, Han's ongoing international features continue to solidify her position as a vital voice in contemporary global literature.