Author Jeong Bora's 'Your Utopia' Nominated for Philip K. Dick Award

First Korean Work Nominated for the World’s Top Three SF Literary Awards
Final Winner to Be Announced on April 18

Author Jeong Bora's short story collection Your Utopia has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, publisher Rabbit Hole announced on the 13th.

The Philip K. Dick Award is considered one of the world's top three science fiction literary awards, alongside the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. This is the first time a Korean novelist's work written in Korean has been nominated for one of the three major SF awards. The final winner will be announced on April 18.

Writer Jeong Bora [Photo provided by Rabbit Hole]

Your Utopia is Jeong Bora's second short story collection, originally published in 2021 under the title Meeting Her. Last year, Anton Hur translated it into English under the title Your Utopia, and the English edition was published in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. The American newsweekly Time selected it as one of the "Books of the Year 2024."

Publisher Rabbit Hole recently changed the title to Your Utopia and reissued a revised edition. According to the publisher, the revised edition features Your Utopia as the title story, with a new order and layout, and the sentences have been refined more meticulously.

Jeong Bora previously gained global attention by being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award.

Your Utopia depicts the stories of beings who endure a petty and bleak world's contradictions, care for each other, and learn awkward love while surviving a miserable life. The protagonist of the title story Your Utopia is an AI smart car wandering a desolate planet abandoned by humanity due to a pandemic, carrying a broken humanoid. The medical humanoid 314, resembling a human, occasionally asks, "What is your utopia?" The smart car, while wandering the broken world, reveals a desperate longing for a better place. Jeong Bora stated that she wrote the story inspired by a case in the United States where the pain scale for treatment was misused as a "customer satisfaction survey," leading patients into opioid addiction.

[Photo by Rabbit Hole]

Jeong Bora graduated from the Department of Humanities at Yonsei University, earned a master's degree in Russian and East European Studies at Yale University, and received a Ph.D. in Russian and Polish literature from Indiana University. In 1998, her work Head won the Yonsei Cultural Award, and in 2008, her story Fox won the Excellence Award in the mobile category of the Digital Literature Award. In 2014, she received the Excellence Award in the short story category at the 1st SF Awards for Seed. Her novel Jojutokki (Cursed Rabbit) was shortlisted for the international category of the Booker Prize in 2022, and the following year, she became the first Korean author to be shortlisted for the National Book Award in the translated literature category.

She has written short story collections such as Cursed Rabbit, Queens of Women, No One Will Know, Midnight Timetable, Death Is Always with You, and Small End; novels including The Door Opened, Dreams of the Dead, Red Sword, Fox, On Pain, and When Night Comes, We; and the essay Anyway, Demo. She has also translated works such as The Master and Margarita, Greed, Pale Horse, Mother, and Robot Fairy Tales.