SUZY LEE
Korea

Born in Seoul in 1974, Suzy Lee studied painting at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University and upon graduation began illustrating children’s novels. During studies at Camberwell College of Arts in the UK she took a draft of her Master’s project, Alice in Wonderland, to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and it was published by Corraini Edizioni in 2002. Her next book Mirror was published in 2003 and became the first of the Border Trilogy: Mirror (2003), Wave (2008) and Shadow (2010). All three wordless stories share the physical center of the book, the binding, that acts as a border between fantasy and reality in the actual story. On one side of the page, we see a little girl, in a mirror, at the seaside, in a storage room and on the other side of the page we see her fantasy and imagination. Wave has received several distinctions in the USA, including the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book 2008 and was selected for the IBBY Silent Books Honour List in 2013. Shadow was also selected as the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book in 2010 as well as the Prêmio FNLIJ, Brazil and Premio Álbum Ilustrado, Gremio de Libreros de Madrid, Spain. Her book Lines (2017) captures her love (and sometimes frustration) of line drawing and minimal colours in the story of a young skater. Her story of a rescued dog Kang-yi (River, 2018) was selected for the 2020 IBBY Honour List and won the Korea Book Award. Recently, she founded the independent publishing company Hintoki Press to publish her own experimental works inspired by old Korean folk motifs. Her involvement with the Vacance Project, a collective of other Korean picture book artists, led to the haunting book, Sim Cheong (2019). Yulu Linen, the collaboration with Cao Wenxuan, and the most recent work of her own Summer won the Bologna Ragazzi Award (Special Mention in Fiction) in 2021 and 2022 in a row, and she received the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award (Illustrator) in 2022.