Baek Heena – laureate 2020 1
Baek Heena, picture book artist Your books often
feature animal characters. What is your relationship to animals, and what is their role in your work? – I love animals! My favourites are dogs and lionesses. I think animals are cuter than humans and there are advantages to using them as characters – I don’t have to deal with prejudices about gender or age. If the animals in the story behave and live like people, that makes it easier to pull readers into the fantasy world. What does your creative process look like? – I just have to sit down and start working. I force myself to finish a story whether it’s good or bad. If I want to finish books on time, I have to stay focused. Especially when I’m doing a threedimensional project, where there are so many things I have to keep track of. I’m also a mother of two children, so I really need two brains and two bodies! But there are times when I’ll be in the middle of one book and start getting ideas for new ones. For example, after I sculpted the dog for Magic Candy, I really loved it. I took a photograph of it, which gave me some new ideas, and later that became the cover of a new book. Jang-su-taang seon-nyeo-nim (‘The Bath Fairy’, Bear Books, 2012) is about a girl and a fairy who playes together Na-neun ghe-dah (‘I am a dog’, Bear Books, 2019) is a sensitive and finelytuned portrayal of a dog and his human family 11