Kim Jung Mi was born in Incheon in 1963. In 1987, she opened the Study Room by the Railroads in Manseok-dong, Incheon. Up until the outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020, she had regularly organized puppet shows, plays, percussion pieces, singing performances, and film festivals with children and teenagers at the Small School by the Railroad. She debuted as a writer in 2000 when her work The Children of Gwaengiburimal won the Changbi Good Children’s Book Prize. Her publications include the YA story collection The Joker and I; the novels My Dongducheon, Everyone Come On, and That Day, a Cat Came to Me; the prose collections It’s Better to Have More Flowers, and Once Again on the Road; the collection of lectures Presence; and the children’s books Flower Island Cats, My Little Sister Ayeong, Paper Rice, Let’s Protect Road Number 6, Gather Around! The Traveling Puppet Troupe, A Crab Lives in a Sea of Poop and Lucky and Five Blessings. She’s recently published a novel titled There for You (2021).
