Anton Hur

Anton Hur (Korean: 허정범; born 7 April 1981) is a Korean writer and translator of Korean literature into English. He has translated the works of Kyung-Sook Shin, Hwang Sok-yong, and Sang Young Park, whose Love in the Big City was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and Bora Chung, whose collection of short stories Cursed Bunny was shortlisted for the same prize.^[1] Hur was also the only translator that year to have been longlisted for two translations.^[2] Hur was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants for his translation of Cursed Bunny.^[3] Hur was awarded a PEN Translates grant to translate The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae.^[4]

Hur, a Korean citizen, was born in Stockholm on 7 April 1981.^[5] His father worked for KOTRA, a state-funded trade and investment promotion organization of the South Korean government, and he was raised in various countries including Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Thailand before settling in Korea. As his family did not initially support him studying literature, he studied law and psychology at Korea University and French at Korea National Open University before pursuing a master's degree in English literature at Seoul National University. He began working as a translator full-time in 2018, beginning with Kyung-Sook Shin's The Court Dancer.^[2] He manages the literary translation group Smoking Tigers.^[6]

In addition to translating Korean literature into English, Hur is also the translator of the forthcoming Korean edition of Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.^[7] His writing has been published in outlets such as Astra Magazine, Words Without Borders, Lithub, Asymptote, and many others.^[8][9][10] In 2022, he was a recipient of the 13th Hong Jin-Ki Creator Award, created in honour of the founder of the newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, that honours "Koreans who made crucial contributions to society, science and technology, as well as culture and arts".^[11]

Hur is openly queer and has written about sexuality, the history of diverse sexuality in Korean literature beginning with Yi Kwang-su's 1909 short story Is It Love, and misery as an enduring theme in queer Korean literature.^[12] He and his husband divide their time between Seoul and Songdo in Incheon.^[13] Hur uses he/they pronouns.^[14]

• Baek, Sehee (2022), I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, Bloomsbury, ISBN 9781635579383, OCLC 1289231338
• Chung, Bora (2021), Cursed Bunny, Honford Star, ISBN 9781916277182
• Hwang, Sok-yong (2021), The Prisoner, Verso, ISBN 978-1-83976-083-9
• Kang, Kyeong-ae (2018), The Underground Village, Honford Star, ISBN 9781999791261
• Park, Sang Young (2019), Love in the Big City, Grove, ISBN 978-0-8021-5878-9
• Shin, Kyung-Sook (2018), The Court Dancer, New York: Pegasus Books, ISBN 9781643132525
• Shin, Kyung-Sook (2022), Violets, Feminist Press, ISBN 9781558612907
• Kang, Myeongseok (2023), Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS, Bighit Music / Flatiron Books, ISBN 978-1-035-03154-2
• Lee, Seong-Bok (2023), Indeterminate Inflorescence, Sublunary Editions, ISBN 978-1-955-19062-6

• Hur, Anton (2024), Toward Eternity, HarperVia, ISBN 9780063344488