Art and Politics of Translation: Behind the Scenes with Sora Kim-Russell
Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 7:00pm
Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW)
112 W. 27th Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10001
This event is free with RSVP.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/k-new-leaders-program-a-conversation-with-sora-kim-russell-tickets-75957391603
The Korean Cultural Center New York, in collaboration with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and the Asian American Writers' Workshop, invites Sora Kim-Russell, one of today’s top Korean-to-English translators. She will share her experiences and perspectives on career development in literary translation and the publishing industry. The talk will be moderated by Jae Won Edward Chung, assistant professor of Korean Studies at Rutgers University.
About Sora Kim-Russell
Sora Kim-Russell is a literary translator and mixed-race Korean-American born and raised in the US and now based in Seoul, South Korea. She has published eleven books in translation, along with numerous short story publications. Her translation of Pyun Hye-young's novel The Hole won the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, and her translations of Pyun's short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker and in Harper's Magazine. Sora's translation of Kim Un-su's novel The Plotters also published to great acclaim, and earned her both the 2018 GKL Korean Literature Translation Award and the 2019 LTI Korea Translation Award.
Sora’s other translations include Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari, Familiar Things, and At Dusk, which was long-listed for the 2019 Man Booker International; Bae Suah's Nowhere to Be Found, which was longlisted for both the PEN Translation Prize and Best Translated Book Award (2016); Jeon Sungtae's Wolves and "Old Wrestler"; and Shin Kyung-sook's I'll Be Right There. She has also translated short fiction by Park Min-gyu, Kim Jung-hyuk, Kim Bi, and others, including writers from the colonial period such as Hyun Jin-geon.
Forthcoming work includes The Law of Lines by Pyun Hye-young; On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Kim Boyoung (co-translated with Joungmin Lee Comfort); and The Prisoner, an autobiography by Hwang Sok-yong(co-translated with Anton Hur).
Sora has taught literary translation at EwhaWomans University and LTI Korea, served as an ALTA mentor, and taught at the Bread Loaf Translators Conference. She is a member of the Smoking Tigers translators collective and tweets intermittently at @spacenakji.
About Jae Won Edward Chung
Jae Won Edward Chung is an assistant professor of Korean Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He was born in Seoul, grew up in Philly, and received his graduate education in New York. He is currently working on a book about media and everyday life in South Korea from 1948 to 1960. He is also interested in narratives about the end. He has previously taught at Columbia University, Ewha University, and University of Colorado Boulder. Last February, he wrote about Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red, which was translated by Sora Kim-Russell, in Boston Review. http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture-arts-society/jae-won-chung-dystopia-everywhere
K-New Leaders Program
The K-New Leaders Program is a brand new initiative for the next generation of leaders, connecting like-minded New Yorkers who support cultural exchange. The program supports young professionals and students in New York City to enhance their capacity through cultural arts programs, mentoring, lectures, and networking opportunities.