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Visiting Professor of the Iowa Writers' Workshop Jack Saebyok Jung will read from his new translation of Kim Hyesoon's Lady No, and Cindy Juyoung Ok will read from her new translation of Hyesoon's The Hell of That Star. Lady No is described by publisher Ecco Press as the following:
"In March 2014, Kim Hyesoon, the grand dame of contemporary Korean poetry, began to post anonymously on the online blog of Munhakdongne, a major South Korean publisher. Rather than use her own name, Kim Hyesoon’s chosen persona for these blog posts was Lady No. Fittingly, Lady No’s writings are dissenting, combative, subversive, and ontologically feminine; formally, they defy any attempt at easy categorization. They are neither poems, nor are they prose, but a radical innovation Kim calls shisanmun—an ungovernable style that heralds her internationally acclaimed works Autobiography of Death and Phantom Pain Wings."
Lady No is praised by E. Tammy Kim of the New Yorker as "[breaking] away from the masculine styles that came before her... [and] pursu[ing] a vernacular that’s intensely Korean yet open to the world." Meanwhile, The Hell of That Star is described as poetry that "enlivens the horror of Korean life under U.S.-backed authoritarianism." Fady Joudah praises Cindy Juyoung Ok's translation of The Hell of That Star with this lovely tribute: "Decades ago, Kim Hyesoon’s ancient soul met Cindy Juyoung Ok's soul. The Hell of That Star is the reunion of two poet-ghosts."
Kim Hyesoon is a poet, essayist, and critic from South Korea. She was the first woman-identifying poet to win the Midang Literature Award, which she received in 2006. Her poetry collection Phantom Pain Wings, translated from Korean by Don Mee Choi (New Directions, 2023), was a highlighted Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. Her other collections include Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), Poor Love Machine (Action Books, 2016), I’m OK, I’m Pig! (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), and All the Garbage of the World, Unite!(Action Books, 2011). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Swedish, French, German, Polish, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Danish. In 2023, Kim Hyesoon and translator Don Mee Choi gave the T.S. Eliot Memorial Reading at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. She has received multiple literary prizes, including the Samsung Ho-Am Prize, UK Royal Society of Literature International Writer Award, Cikada Prize, Lee Hyoung-Gi Literary Award, Griffin Poetry Prize, Daesan Poetry Award, Sowol Poetry Award, and Kim Su-Yong Literary Award. Kim Hyesoon lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Jack Saebyok Jung is a poet, translator, and educator whose creative practice navigates the intersections of literature, technology, and identity. Known for his translations of Korean poetry, notably the cutting-edge works of Yi Sang, Jack explores how language moves between cultures, capturing nuance and existential depth through rhythmical precision.
Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward (Yale University Press, 2024), two chapbooks, and poems in The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The Massachusetts Review. A former public high school teacher, she now teaches creative writing at Wellesley College.
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