Hwang In-suk was born in 1958 in Seoul, Korea. Her literary career took off in 1984 when she won the Kyunghyang Daily News New Writer’s Award with the poem “I’ll Be Born as a Cat.” Her publications include the poetry collections The Birds Set the Sky Free, Sadness Wakes Me, We Meet Like Snowbirds, My Gloomy, Precious One, The Evident Stroll, Night Train to Lisbon, There’s So Much Love Left to Give, and In the Evening of Any Given Day; the novels Stray Cat Princess and People on the Roof; the essay collections Writings by Hwang In-Suk, Days of Joy, and Cats of Haebangchon. Hwang is the recipient of the Dongsuh Literary Award, the Kim Su-young Literary Award, the Hyeongpyeong Literary Prize, and the Hyundae Munhak Literary Award.
