Jo Kyung-ran earned her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Seoul Institute of the Arts, debuting with The French Optician (1996) which won the Donga-Ilbo Prize. That same year, her novel Time for Baking Bread won the 1st Literary Community New Writer's Award. Her works also include Movement (1998), Origin of the Family (1999), My Purple Sofa (2000), We've Met Before (2001), Searching for the Elephant (2002), the essay " Jo Kyung Ran's Crocodile Story" (with illustrations by Junko Yamakusa, 2003), the 2003 novella A Narrow Gate, which won the 48th Contemporary Literary Prize, and a new book to appear this November. Her work has earned numerous literary awards, including Today's Young Artist Prize from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and has been translated into German and Japanese.