Readers’ love publishes a book of essays posthumously

Every December, a reporter in the literature department notifies the winners of an annual spring literary contest by phone. You can't see their faces, but you can guess their ages by the sound of their voices. This year, the voices on the other end of the line carried a distinctive weight. Some winners asked, "Really?" over and over again with trembling voices, while others calmly said, "I've been waiting." But it was easy to feel that they had been dreaming of a literary career for a long time.

‘At Sixty, I Become Salvia Again’ is a posthumous essay book by the author who won the 2021 Maeil Shinmun Senior Literary Award in the nonfiction category for her essay named ‘The Struggle of an Old Job Seeker.’ The author, a literary enthusiast, read books at her friend's house during her impoverished childhood. After graduating from high school, she worked in a factory to make ends meet. Following her marriage to a man who was the eldest in his family, she dedicated her life to her family and only began writing earnestly after experiencing a gray divorce. Despite facing financial challenges and coping with heart disease and hearing disabilities, she remained steadfast in her pursuit of writing.

In the book, her love for humanity stands out. The author shares her experience of working at a hospice cancer ward for 20 years and confesses, "I realized that my pain was nothing when I saw the patients battling with pain every day. The idea of abandoning me was a luxury." After moving into a small, old house in Gangwon Province, she received pocket money from her 90-year-old neighbor. "The old bills smelled like her,” the author wrote in her essay. “It must have been pocket money from her children who had visited her on holidays."

This year's winners have an average age of 47.9, which is over 10 years older than the winners in 2022 (37.4) and 2023 (34.8). In my opinion, this year's winners embody a sincere commitment to literature. There were many stories that could not be told without experiencing life. Of course, no one knows if the older winners will be able to make a living from writing or if they will continue to write. Similarly to how the essays written by the author of 'The Struggle of an Old Job Seeker' were published in a book through the readers' commemoration, I hope that the support from readers will aid the winners in evolving into 'real writers.’


hoho@donga.com