Welcome to my first newsletter!
Years ago, I followed the best marketing advice at the time and created a newsletter. But then I thought: Who would be interested in getting news from me?? Get real. So I stuck a signup link to my website and promptly forgot about it. I didn't even bother telling anyone. And over the years, people actually signed up! So I decided to really do it and posted about it, telling people in earnest. And here we are. Anton Is Here.
2022 has been so eventful that I had to stop updating the "news" page on my website because I could barely keep track. I was so eager to be out there having gone three years without a book release. Four books came out within the space of a year—The Prisoner, Cursed Bunny, Love in the Big City, and Violets—and then the Booker thing happened in the midst of it all. And then came I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. And then the American editions of those books began to come out.
Which made me realize that authors may go for years without a book coming out, but translators can potentially always have a book coming out. I asked Daniel Hahn, "So when do you actually translate?!" He said he translated in transit. I turned down an event in Portland thinking, I'm not ready to be Daniel Hahn yet. But then I found myself, while on a plane to DC, going through copyedits for a book scheduled for 2023 and realizing, Oh my god, I've become Daniel Hahn.
Upcoming events
November
Nov 10 // online // Warts and All: Sustaining a career in Literary Translation. "Four professional Literary Translators openly and honestly discuss the realities of sustaining a career in the industry." (I’m told a recording will be made available.)
Nov 15 // live // Anton Hur Talk Concert. Korean-language event for HUFS students only. I was asked to do a lecture but I begged them to turn it into a Q&A instead.
Nov 17 // online // Translating The Age of Doubt by Pak Kyongni. "As a truly global group of writers tasked with working to bring one Korean author’s fiction into English, their insights into their process and experiences of translating for this book provide a window onto current practices, concerns, challenges and joys in the field of Korean to English literary translation."
Nov 24 // live // Untamed Tongues: The Translator as Shaman and Rebel. George Town Literary Festival, Penang. "We speak to three masterful translators on the wild interplay and tensions of these two impulses — to render a text understandable and enjoyable in another language while challenging the limitations of language itself."
December
Dec 8 // online // Cursed Bunny American launch. "Author Bora Chung and translator Anton Hur discuss and celebrate the release of their new collection of stories, Cursed Bunny."
Online content
LTI Korea filmed a long interview of Bora and me but for some mysterious reason decided to release it in different parts. Anyway, here's part one. Part two comes out Monday (Nov 14).
I sat down with the Books and Boba podcast for an interview and my brain promptly forgot when they told me it would be out. Watch this space!
In other news, I've signed a contract to write a novel in Korean for Itta Publishing, and Moonji Publishing assures me my translation of Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds (총상 입은 밤하늘) will be released in December. There's also some more very exciting news (well, for me) on the horizon, but it will have to wait for another newsletter. I'll write again soon! And thank you for signing up—I teared up a little when I saw how many had. After years in the valley of death, it feels incredible to walk among the living once more.
Sincerely,
Anton
