Language & Literature

KOREAN BOOK CLUB(THE HOLE TRANSLATED BY SORA KIM-RUSSELL)

TIME & DATE: Friday 9 September 2022, 18:30(AEST)

VENUE

Korean Cultural Centre(255 Elizabeth St. Sydney) Booking required. Please click ‘HERE‘ to book.

Live Streaming on KCC Youtube Channel. Please click ‘HERE‘ to watch.

SUPPORTED BY: Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea

BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Hole by Hye-young Pyun and translated by Sora Kim-Russell

STORY OF THE BOOK: Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is hit mother-in-law a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life foals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

GUEST: An award – winning translator Sora Kim-Russell and Australian moderator Michaela Kalowski

※ Register to win one of 12 copies of our book of the month, signed by the translator, Sora Kim-Russell. (Both ‘Offline’ and ‘Online’ winners will receive ‘The Hole’ book at the end of the event)

GUEST DETAILS

1. Sora Kim-Russell

Sora Kim-Russell is a mixed-race Korean-American literary translator who has published fourteen 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. Her translation of The Plotters by Kim Unsu won the 2019 LTI Korea Translation Award as was longlisted fro the 2020 Dublin Literary Award. She has translated works by other prominent writers, including Hwang Sok-yong, Kim Bo-young, Bae Suah, and Shin Kyung-sook, as well as early modern writers, including Hyun Jin-geon and Kang Kyung-ae. Sora has taught literary translation as Ewha Womans University and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, served as a prose mentor for the American Literary Translators Association, and taught at the Bread Loaf Translators Conference. She tweets sporadically at @spacenakji.

2. Michaela Kalowski

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and curator for writers and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Amos Oz, Colum McCann, Stan Grant, Trent Dalton, Holly Ringland & Etgar Keret. In 2022 she’s curator of International Author events for Brisbane Writers Festival & curator of ABC RN’s on-air writers festival, Big Weekend of Books. She’s conducted radio interviews for ABC RN’s The Music Show, Big Ideas & The Bookshelf, ABC Classic and has presented programs across ABC radio.