Artist Residency | 2022 | Bucheon Residency | Project

2022 Bucheon Residency for literary artists from UNESCO Cities of Literature

Each year, Bucheon hosts an international residency for writers from UNESCO Cities of Literature, selected through an open call. The residency provides time, space, and opportunities for writers to pursue their creative work while experiencing Bucheon's literary and cultural landscape.
As one of the representative collaborative initiatives within the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), the residency encourages literary exchange, supports artistic development, and strengthens international connections among UNESCO Cities of Literature.

Angela Sangma Francis

<Angela Sangma Francis>

Angela Sangma Francis (UK) is a British Bangladeshi writer of children's books, including Everest and Amazon River, both of which are also known to Korean readers. Her work has been translated into 17 languages.
Her books have received numerous international accolades. Everest was selected as the winner of the Best Young People's Book Award by Openbook in Taiwan, named an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the Children's Book Council, and received a Special Mention for the Bologna Ragazzi Award. Her adult short story, “Crocodile,” was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship in 2021.

Tricia Park

<Tricia Park>

Tricia Park (USA), a Korean diasporic American, became a concert violinist at the age of thirteen and had a uniquely bewildering childhood marked by both exhilarating adulation and soul-crushing expectations. She is a violinist, educator, podcaster, and writer.
She is currently working on an autofictional novel about an Asian musician and her experiences of assimilation into American life, exploring questions of class, race, and sexism in the field of classical music.

About the Bucheon Residency

Angela Sangma Francis

“The Bucheon residency has allowed me the spaciousness with which to allow the cultural and logistical threads of being in Korea with people living here, informally and formally, and their deep impact upon the writing I am doing. I am delighted to see the ways in which my experiences as an American born Korean woman navigating Korea and the complexities of toggling between two cultures are organically affecting the scenes and interiority of my writing. Nothing short of being here could replace the osmosis of my residency expeirence on the subway, experiencing the food, culture, language, of the country in real time.These experiences inflect nuance in my writing in more ways than I’d hoped for. In short, slipping into this everyday contemporary Korean life, even for these brief short weeks, has brought me closer to my family, my heritage, and given me a deeper sense of my identity while simultaneously stoking further my desire to contribute to the Korean diasporic experience.”

Tricia Park

“My time in Korea was marked by the seasonal shift between autumn and winter. In the space of 7 weeks the landscape had almost completely transformed. The side of the motorway, once flashing with colour, was stripped stark and grey. Leaves whirring in the rain were whipped off in a blink, like a vigorous breath on a dandelion pappus. Wet vegetation pressed into gutters and pavements were collected and stuffed into stacks of polypropene sacks. The heaped sacks were biggest in the Central Park where leaves fall by the mound. The thing about transitions is that the starkness of the change isn’t always felt in the moment but in retrospect. The pleasures of that seasonal shift is the reminder that all cities are experiencing their own change. The passing of time is making its mark on all places. It’s the unavoidable connection we have with every other human, no matter where we are in the world. Time and its passing. Life moves forwards, limits are broken, writing projects develp, friendships are formed, impressions of places are made.”