K-Seminar Series: Seoul Mothers & the Poetry of Rice
Stories of Korean Motherhood, Food, and Everyday Love
Join Professor Jieun Kiaer for a special evening of storytelling, poetry, and food — an exploration of Korean motherhood, memory, and everyday love.
Jieun will talk about her newly released novel Seoul Mothers — a powerful and poignant story of three women navigating parenting, ambition, and identity in contemporary Seoul. She will also share selected poems from her bilingual collection, Have You Had Your Rice?, where everyday Korean dishes become portraits of longing, humour, and care.
In conversation with Julie Yoonnyung Lee, Senior Journalist of News and Current Affairs at the BBC, Jieun will reflect on the journey behind her stories, the challenges of Korean motherhood, and how food becomes a quiet language of love.
Following the talk, you are warmly invited to enjoy a light Korean buffet, featuring dishes from the poems — an edible reflection of the words shared.
About Jieun Kiaer
Professor Jieun Joe Kiaer (조지은) is the YBM-KF Professor of Korean Linguistics at the University of Oxford. A poet, novelist, and academic, she is a leading expert on Korean language, Hallyu (the Korean Wave), and cultural translation. She has authored over 50 books, including Whose Language Is English? (Yale University Press, 2024), and serves as the Korean consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary. Her literary and academic work blends scholarship with personal narrative — shaped by a life lived between and beyond Korean and English. She is also co-producing Haenyeo: Ocean Work, a documentary celebrating the lives and stories of Jeju’s sea-diving women.
