Bucheon Residency

The literary cities have worked towards promoting mobility and exchange of writers. As part of international cooperative initiatives to support the values of creativity and diversity of voices, Bucheon happily launched its residency program in 2020, following the lead of other literary cities offering residency programs for writers and artists from other UNESCO Cities of Literature and beyond. Bucheon Residency Program will be offered annually onward.

We aim to increase international exchange and communication, contribute to the mobility of writers, translators, and cartoonists, offer a creative and inspiring environment and provide them an opportunity to introduce their work to Korean readers. We invite the artists who are linked with the member cities of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network to the Writer in Residency program of Bucheon!

The inaugural residents were Rory Waterman from Nottingham, UK and Jeff Noh from Montreal, Canada.

Rory Waterman is a poet, critic and editor. He lives in Nottingham, where he teaches English and leads the MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. His third full-length poetry collection, Sweet Nothings, was published by Carcanet in May 2020. His two other collections : Tonight the Summer’s Over (Carcanet, 2013), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize in 2014; and Sarajevo Roses (Carcanet, 2017), shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize 2019.

Jeff Noh is a writer based in Montreal, was born in Seoul and grew up in New Jersey, New York, and Southern Alberta. He is a Ph. D. candidate in English Literature at McGill University and teaches English literature and writing at Dawson College and Concordia University. He is currently at work on a novel titled Patrimony. An excerpt titled “Jikji” from the novel was published in the summer 2019 issue of Carte Blanche and Best Canadian Stories 2020 in the fall of 2020 in Canada and the United States.

About the experience of Bucheon Residency

“Long into the future, I know I will close my eyes and again see Bucheon turn into a sea of flashing neon and yellow sparkles under a sinking golden sun from the pagoda atop Wonmisan. I have fallen in love with your special, close-knit city, and my poetry and my life have been invigorated by its people, aspect and perspectives.”
- Rory Waterman

“As I explore Bucheon’s thriving literary scene and rich history, I am continually reminded that displacement does not preclude affiliation and even belonging. Indeed, it’s precisely Bucheon’s diasporic character-its status as a “city of outsiders”- that makes it an inspiring place to explore questions fundamentally Korean in nature. It’s been a great honor to do this work through the residency.”
-Jeff Noh

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