Professor Kim Kyungwook, School of Drama, Publishes First Essay Collection, Am I Good Enough to Write?

Professor Kim Kyungwook, who teaches Creative Writing in the Department of Playwriting at the School of Drama, has published his first essay collection, Am I Good Enough to Write?

The publication is special, because Kim has written only novels for over thirty years since his debut. In a cheerful and sharp writing style, Kim reflects on his twenty years of teaching experience in the Department of Playwriting since 2006, sharing the questions he received from his students and life moments he captured while struggling to write well.

Kim Kyungwook was appointed to a teaching position at K-Arts after writing for more than ten years since his debut. Since then, Professor Kim contemplated writing alongside his students rather than asserting authority as an instructor. As a senior who started earlier, Kim engages with his students to answer a difficult question: “What is writing?”

Kim’s book is filled with the reflections he gained from teaching his students aspiring to write professionally. However, a complete enlightenment shakes the novel – the form of inquiry. Hence, Kim’s single enlightenment leads to another question. The questions and insights in Am I Good Enough to Write? ping-pong back and forth, deepening the thinking about writing.

Moreover, Am I Good Enough to Write? emphasizes that reading is the writer’s nourishment. Reflecting on letters from Van Gogh, Kim recalls that stories are not written but told. Drawing from Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, The Things They Carried (1990), Kim explores the writer’s agonies in transforming experiences into stories. The seventeen books Kim references and reexamines in his essays hint at the countless hours he must have spent reading.

Any reader of Kim’s work who cannot stop writing despite experiencing small and large setbacks will find consolation and strength from this book, understanding that talent is not something to be taken for granted but rather that creativity is the fruit of relentless labor.