Kim Hyesoon is one of the most prominent and influential poets of South Korea. She is the first woman poet to receive the prestigious Kim Su-yeong Literary Award and Midang Literary Award, and her work has since been translated around the world. Among many other honors, she is a winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019 and was the first foreign laureate to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, in 2023. Her poetry collection Phantom Pain Wings, translated by Don Mee Choi, was named poetry book of the year in 2023 by the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Poetry Society.