Don Mee Choi
Don Mee Choi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1962 (age 62–63) Seoul, South Korea |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | California Institute of the Arts BFA '84; MFA '86 |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable works | DMZ Colony |
| Notable awards | Whiting Award, MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellowship, National Book Award for Poetry |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 최돈미 |
| Hanja | 崔燉美[1] |
| RR | Choe Donmi |
| MR | Ch'oe Tonmi |
Don Mee Choi (Korean: 최돈미; born 1962[2]) is a Korean-American poet and translator.
Life
Don Mee Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, educated in the United States, and now lives in Berlin, Germany. Choi's works of documentary poetry draw on family history as well as archival material to interrogate "the overlapping histories of Korea and the U.S."[3] In addition to her own poetry, she is a prolific translator of modern Korean women poets, including several books by Kim Hyesoon.[4]
Awards
- 2011: Whiting Award
- 2012: Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize for All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon
- 2016: Lannan Literary Fellowship Award
- 2019: Griffin Poetry Prize Award for translation of Autobiography of Death from the Korean written by Kim Hyesoon
- 2020: National Book Award for Poetry for DMZ Colony
- 2021: Guggenheim Fellowship Poetry[5]
- 2021: MacArthur Fellows Program[6]
- 2021: Royal Society of Literature International Writer[7]
Works
Books
- The Morning News is Exciting, Action Books, 2010, ISBN 9780979975561
- Petite Manifesto, Vagabond Press, 2014 (chapbook)
- Freely Frayed,ᄏ=q, & Race=Nation, Wave Books, 2014 (chapbook)
- Sky Translation, Goodmorning Menagerie A Chapbook Press, n.d. (chapbook)
- Hardly War, Wave Books, 2016
- DMZ Colony, Wave Books, 2020
- Mirror Nation, Wave Books, (Publication date 4/2/24)
Translations
- Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2005
- Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women, Zephyr Press, 2006
- All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2011
- Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2014
- I'm OK, I'm Pig! by Kim Hyesoon, Bloodaxe Books, 2014
- Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, Bloodaxe Books, 2018 (winner of the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize)
- Ahn Hak-sŏp #4 by Ahn Hak-sŏp and Don Mee Choi, The Green Violin, 2018 (chapbook)
- Yi Sang: Selected Works by Yi Sang, ed. Don Mee Choi, Wave Books, 2020
Anthology
- Yasuhiro Yotsumoto Ming Di Don Mee Choi, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Hyesoon Kim, Trilingual Renshi, Vagabond Press, 2015, ISBN 9781922181442
References
- ^ "코리아나 - Books & More > 상세화면". Koreana : Korean culture & arts (in Korean). Summer 2024. Retrieved 30 July 2025.
- ^ "재미동포 시인 최돈미, '천재상' 맥아더 펠로십 선정". Kukmin Ilbo (in Korean). 30 September 2021. Retrieved 30 July 2025.
- ^ Gullander-Drolet, Claire (2022-10-27). "On Not Translating: Don Mee Choi's Anti-neocolonial Poetics - Post45". Retrieved 2024-04-06.
- ^ "Don Mee Choi, poet". Wave Books. Retrieved 2022-10-14.
- ^ "Don Mee Choi". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-10-14.
- ^ "This Year's MacArthur 'Genius Grants' Were Just Announced—Here's The Full Winner List". NPR. September 28, 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-09-28. Retrieved September 28, 2021.
- ^ "Inaugural RSL International Writers Announced". Royal Society of Literature. 30 November 2021. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
External links
- Kathleen Rooney, "'Hardly War,' by Don Mee Choi" (review), The New York Times, April 22, 2016.
- Profile at the Whiting Foundation