A Decade in the Works: Catching up with Anton Hur - Randy Kim | Podcast - Nhac.vn

Award-winning, critically acclaimed queer Korean author and literary translator Anton Hur makes a special appearance on this episode from Australia, where he’s currently doing his residency. I’ve known Anton for the past 10+ years, and have watched his ascending rise in the Korean and Western literary world. I asked him questions about his debut fiction novel, Toward Eternity, and what he has learned as an author after years of translating successful Korean literature for an English-speaking audience. We chatted about the art of translation in literature, AI’s consequential effects on writers, the responsibility of speaking out on social issues, Palestine, and anti-authoritarianism, Mariah Carey’s legacy, and more. Check this episode out, and follow Anton Hur’s work!

Bio:

Anton Hur is the author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books). He was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul. He studied law and psychology at Korea University and specialized in Victorian poetry at the Seoul National University Graduate School English program under Dr. Nancy Jiwon Cho. He won a PEN Translates grant for his translation of The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae and a PEN/Heim grant for Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, the latter of which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

His translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, making him the third translator in history to be double-longlisted in the same year, and he also judged the prize in 2025. Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award, which Anton also judged in 2024. His translations of Kyung-Sook Shin’s Violets and Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence were consecutively longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. His other translations include Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer, Violets, and I Went to See My Father, Sung-Il Kim’s Bleeding Empire series, Kim Choyeop’s If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, and Baek Sehee’s international bestseller I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki and its sequel. His co-translation of Beyond the Story: 10-Year History of BTS debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

He has taught at the British Centre for Literary Translation, the Ewha University Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, and the Bread Loaf Translators Conference. Anton is represented by Safae El-Ouahabi at Rogers Coleridge & White in London.

Website: AntonHur.com

Instagram: AntonHur

Bluesky: @ antonhur.com