Korean Literature discussion

Last week, The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) gave 2 of its awards to the trio of translators of Kim Yideum's Hysteria. Jake Levine (Translator), Soeun Seo and Hedgie Choi won the 2020 National Translation Award (NTA) in Poetry as well as the 2020 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize.

Here's the announcement blurb:

Kim Yideum’s Hysteria, translated by Jake Levine, Soeun Seo, and Hedgie Choi, resists established Korean literary culture in the tradition of Korean feminist poetics. Page by page, Yideum’s poems against rationality, lyricism, and polite society reckon with both political and personal revolutions. Accordingly, the rendering of her poems across languages is multifold as Yideum’s words must be as intentionally irrational as historical oppression. These taut, unsettled poems burst into flames in the hands of the reader, a burning fuse creating a clear path for contemporary Korean women’s poetry.

https://literarytranslators.wordpress...

If you've read Hysteria, what did you think of it?

Some upcoming U.K. editions of Korean books in translation:

https://londonkoreanlinks.net/books/l...

Alwynne wrote: "Some upcoming U.K. editions of Korean books in translation:

https://londonkoreanlinks.net/books/l..."

Alwynne, Thank you! I missed your post and "discovered" this site for the first time this morning. What a find! They posted an article Jan 11 that is chock full of additional details, links, covers, etc. and links to the upcoming releases page you id'd.

"Literature and poetry in translation titles for 2021: more than a dozen to look forward to!" https://londonkoreanlinks.net/2021/01...

Thanks Carol, think we're both list fans! But I find it so hard to keep up with forthcoming translations so find this kind of info really useful. Quite a few look promising and I've pre-ordered Cursed Bunny. Also like the sound of Shoko's Smile: Stories

Came across this article which might interest people
My Korean Mother and I Speak to the Dead:
Ghost stories are a way for Alex Laughlin and her mother to acknowledge the trauma and grief of the Korean diaspora.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture...?

I saw this January 4, 2022 release at the Columbia University site:

Table for One: Stories , a short story collection by contemporary author, Yun Ko-eun; translated by Lizzie Buehler.

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/table-f...

Thanks Carol, will check it out.

This article on translating Korean literature into English by Sora Kim-Russell came out a while ago but thought it might interest anyone who missed it:

https://aaww.org/the-implicit-i-conte...

Very interesting to read, thanks for sharing!

Interview with Yoon Choi on her new book Skinship

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-an...

Some articles people might have missed:

Sue Park on Ae-Ran Kim
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/spec...

Anton Hur on translation:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/spec...

And not Korean lit but discusses Zainichi Koreans:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/spec...

Not sure if this entry should be placed in this discussion thread and whether this has been already mentioned, but still.
There's a Seoul Modern Writers Festival going on - since it's online, short stories and poems of modern Korean authors can be read right on the site both in Korean and English. Han Gan, Kim Soom, Lee Miye and other quite popular nowadays authors' works are featured.
https://buk.io/@la8280

I came across a couple of interesting articles featuring Anton Hur discussing queer themes in South Korean fiction, I also liked that he challenges the notion of South Korea, and by extension, South Korean lit as representing one world view and how racist/reductionist that is as a perspective. I've noticed a similar tendency on GR in reviews covering Japanese lit where reviewers talk about a book being difficult to understand because it's typically Japanese for example.

http://queersoutheastasia.com/wp-cont...

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/a...

Anton Hur on translating Love in the Big City

https://lithub.com/to-all-the-gays-of...