SEOUL — A new international poetry anthology titled Like Flowers Blooming Together Without a Promise: KAOWL & CNPN Golden Pen Anthology has officially been published. Edited by Dr. Siyoung Doung, the volume brings together writers across diverse languages and nationalities to promote peace, mutual empathy, and international literary exchange.

Jointly administered by the Korea Association of World Literature (KAOWL) and the Culture & People Newspaper (CNPN), the publication features work from past recipients of the KAOWL & CNPN Golden Pen Award.

The anthology is structured into two main parts:

Part I: Representative Works by Previous Golden Pen Award Recipients — Focuses on internationally active poets, starting with inaugural award recipient Rahim Karim (Kyrgyzstan). Featured writers include Dimitris P. Kraniotis (Greece), Maja Herman-Sekulić (Serbia/US), Cáo Shuí (China), Tarık Günersel (Türkiye), Jernail S. Aanand (India), Kazimierz Burnat (Poland), Elena Liliana Popescu (Romania), Germain Droogenbroodt (Belgium), Siyoung Doung (South Korea), Lidia Chiarelli (Italy), Dušan Gojkov (Serbia), and Katica Kulavkova (North Macedonia). The section highlights universal themes of peace, human dignity, war, memory, and nature.

Part II: Special Section — presents a biographical profile and detailed record of Korean poet Dr. Siyoung Doung’s global literary footprint, documenting publications, translations, and cultural exchanges across Central Asia, Europe, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The title reflects the core philosophy of the project: that poets from distinct linguistic and cultural backgrounds can bloom together in a shared literary garden without prior agreement or demand. According to KAOWL, the Golden Pen Award is expanding from an individual honor into an ongoing platform for global cross-cultural connection.

About Dr. Siyoung Doung

Based in Seoul, Dr. Siyoung Doung graduated from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Dongguk University and earned a Ph.D. in Korean Language and Literature from Hanyang University. She further expanded her academic pursuits by studying humanities at Regensburg University in Germany. Her teaching career includes positions as a professor at Korea Tourism University in Korea and Jilin University of Finance and Economics in China. Her literary journey began in 2003 with her poetry debut in the literary magazine Dacheung. Since then, she has published numerous poetry collections, including Future Hunting, In Search of a Strange God, The Phone Call from God, The Eyes of November, The Carnival of Time (Anthology), Was It You, Was It Me, or Was It Longing?, The Scent of Secrets, Aria of Everyday Life, The River Flowing Under the Pen, The Magic Letters, and The Horizon Never Gets Wet. In addition to poetry, Doung has contributed significantly to literary research with works such as Roh Cheon-myung’s Poetry and Semiotics, Korean Literature and Semiotics, and Semiotics of Modern Poetry. Her exploration of literature extends into travel writing, with essay collections like Encountering Culture Through Travel and Encountering Travel Through Literature. Her literary excellence has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Park Hwa-mok Literary Award (2010), Poetry and Poetics Young Poet Award (2011), the Grand Prize at the Korean Buddhist Literature Awards (2018), the 32nd Dongguk Literary Award (2019), the Yeongrang Literary Award for Criticism (2020), and the 7th Woltan Park Jong-hwa Literary Award by the Korean Writers’ Association (2021). Most recently, she received the Literary Youth Work Award in 2024. In recognition of her contributions to literature, she was also a recipient of a creative grant from the Arts Council Korea in 2005. 

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