Border Crossing– the importance of translation for Korean literature

Bae Suah debuted as a writer in 1993 with the publication of a short story “A Dark Room in 1988” in the literary magazine Novel and Thought. Her many novels include A Greater Music, Untold Night and Day and It’s Far, Uru Is Going to Be Late. Her best-known short story collections are North Station and Snake and Water. She was awarded Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize in 2003, Dongseo Literary Prize in 2004 and Writer in Residence in Zürich in 2018.

Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean, and the translator of the novel I Hear Your Voice and the story collection Diary of a Murderer by Young-ha Kim. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, a Granta New Voices pick, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. She teaches creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College, in Seoul.

James Jiang is a writer, editor and recovering academic based in Brisbane/Meanjin. He is Assistant Editor at Griffith Review and Literary Essays Editor at Cordite Poetry Review.