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All titles are eligible for publication support from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. More information on this funding is available at KLWave.
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Booknamul, 2022
It was a warm spring day. With no signs or forewarning, love came to me.
When We Look at the Stars is a queer, soul-stirring coming-of-age novel about finding oneself within fandom in small-town Korea. In the coastal town of Jinhae, Joo Da-in and J bond over their love for K-pop idol group Universe and the wealth of gay fanfiction about the love between their favourite members. Bookish, melancholy Da-in becomes fixated on the works of a particular writer known online as Goddess J, while somewhat jaded J uncovers a hidden talent when she tries her hand at writing fanfics of her own. Interspersed with excerpts from Da-in’s favourite fics à la Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl and heartfelt internet correspondence reminiscent of Jen Wilde’s Queens of Geek, the novel follows the girls as they navigate the pressures of adolescence and everything after, learn to chart their own paths, and come into their identities in an era of escapism, the expansion of the World Wide Web, and shipping wars.
Available Upon Request
Partial Sample (40 pages) Reader’s Report and Synopsis
Munhakdongne, 2023
The yard there was completely walled in by buildings. The sky was blocked out by a massive canopy overhead. Plastic turf carpeted the ground, so no one ever stepped foot on actual soil. “Why would they go that far?” By which we meant, why deprive people of even the feeling of earth beneath their feet?
This Is Your Country is a novel about the lives of various people connected to a migrant detention center on the outskirts of Seoul, known ominously by the people who pass through or remain confined there as That Place. The narrator, a Korean woman, comes to know many of the detainees and their stories when she begins taking part in a visitation program after resigning from her job. Through visits with migrants from as near as China and Russia to as far away as Nigeria and the Middle East, the narrator comes to challenge her own implicit assumptions and forges unforgettable bonds with people who seem so different from her yet yearn for many of the same things: family, dignity, and belonging. A resonant patchwork of stories from South Korea, whose relatively recent history with migrants and the concept of multiculturalism is already fraught, This Is Your Country will appeal to readers of Viet Thanh Nguyen and Dina Nayeri and promises to shed new light on the lives of “others” in one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world.
Available Upon Request
Full Sample (44k words) Up to 5 million KRW in publication support from the Daesan Cultural Foundation
Moonji Publishing, 2024
Then she lay down again and didn’t move for a long time. The room was silent, the hands, heat, and eyes of the woman who had touched her so tenderly earlier now sublimated. Gone.
No Night for Us is a collection of ten short stories that explore love and suspicion, apathy and obsession, and the surprising permeability of the thin wall between the living and the dead. These stories center around women struggling with addiction (“Raising a Monstera,” “9”), grappling with the dissipation of their passions (“No One,” “Home”), immersing themselves to a concerning degree in newfound interests (“Only Afternoons on Sunday,” “Jane’s Humming”), questioning their identities and desires (“No Night for Us,” “Melon”), and questioning their very realities (“Pluto, Your Black Cat,” “Body and Light”). With introspective prose colored by moments of wry humor and relatability, Wi Soo Jung captivates in this, her second full-length collection. Fans of Ha Seong-nan’s eerie, pensive short stories (Flowers of Mold, Bluebeard’s First Wife, etc.) as translated by Janet Hong, as well as readers who appreciate the spare, ominous writing of writers such as Laura van den Berg (The Isle of Youth, The Third Hotel, etc.) and Yoko Ogawa as translated by Stephen Snyder (The Memory Police, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, etc.) will delight in Wi’s subdued and sublime storytelling in a collection that invites readers to question what is real and true at every turn.
Available Upon Request
Partial Sample (90 pages) Synopsis
Jaeum&Moeum, 2021
Goosebumps sprang up on the nape of my neck and down my spine. My hunched shoulders began to tremble. I turned my head, slow and fearful. Slid my eyes toward that voice. Once again, I was expecting to see nothing, but now, as if to mock me, a black figure was indeed standing there in that spot. What on earth is that?
No Matter How Odd follows Jeong Haejin, a young woman who develops post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder after surviving an accident that claimed the lives of her closest friends. She is far from the only one in her neighborhood, though, with a fixation or two. Among the people she regularly encounters are an aspiring actress who essentially lives in costume, a precocious child determined to keep his neighborhood mailbox standing, a playwright who hears ticking sounds throughout her drafting process, and a British tourist who has found himself stranded in Korea after developing an intense fear of flying overnight. As Haejin navigates her own struggles day to day, she unwittingly becomes a key player in others’ strange lives and stories. Perhaps none of these relationships is more bizarre, though, than the one Haejin strikes up with a sentient shadow in need of a name and some company. In the process of befriending the colorful characters all around her, Haejin comes to terms with herself and her disabilities and learns to embrace life as it happens, no matter how odd. A quirky, heartwarming story for readers of Sayaka Murata and Hiromi Kawakami.
Available Upon Request
An excerpt published in Words Without Borders as part of the Disability folio edited by Clare Richards
Moonji Publishing, 2025
Out of all our classmates, how had the four of us ended up going together? I couldn’t really remember. The same way I could no longer recall what we did on that trip to Nami Island, which we’d chosen because it was a popular tourist destination at the time. But I still remembered the early spring sunlight, a long beam shining through the bare trees. Light that seemed to whispering hope to us when we were still so young.
Everything About Spring Nights is the latest short story collection by the widely acclaimed and award-winning author Sou Linne Baik. In seven short stories set against backdrops as varied as Seoul, New York, and Paris, Baik draws on universal emotions to paint striking yet subdued portraits of people grappling with loneliness, estrangement, grief, and simply growing older. Baik’s candid, lyrical storytelling as well as her grounded and deeply human characters will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge; Olive, Again) and Lorrie Moore (Self-Help; Like Life).
Available Upon Request
Partial Sample (90 pages) Synopsis