Lauren Hyunseo is a rising senior at Korea International School. Lauren has always found herself in a balancing act of sorts: attempting to balance modernity with tradition, Korean culture with American. In navigating her identity, she has developed a passion for issues of cultural discrimination and philosophy. Her love for writing serves to produce poems of her take on these ideas, stemming from her personal experiences as well as her holistic views and metaphorical interpretations.

Fox Bead was inspired by a traditional Korean folktale of the nine-tailed fox, a mythical creature originating from East Asian folklore. In particular, this poem took inspiration from a folktale in which the nine-tailed fox aspired to become human. To do so, she had to swallow a bead containing the soul of a human, every day for one hundred days.