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Ha Seong-nan is the author of five short story collections including Bluebeard's First Wife and Flowers of Mold and three novels. Over her career, she's received a number of prestigious awards, such as the Dong-in Literary Award in 1999, Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize in 2000, the Isu Literature Prize in 2004, the Oh Yeong-su Literary Award in 2008, and the Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award in 2009. Janet Hongis awriter and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the 2018 TAFirst Translation Prize and the 2018 LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of HanYujoo'sThe Impossible Fairy Tale. She's a two-time winner of theHarveyAward forBest International Book for her translations ofKeum Suk Gendry-Kim'sGrassand Yeong-shinMa's Moms. Otherrecent translations includeHa Seong-nan'sBluebeard's First Wife(selectedas Publishers Weekly's 10 Best Books of 2020) and Kwon Yeo-sun's Lemon. She is currently theKorean prose mentor for ALTA's Emerging Translator Mentorship Program.
These mesmerizing stories of disconnection and detritus unfurl with the surreal illogic of dreams--it's as impossible to resist their pull as it is to understand, in retrospect, how circumstance succeeded circumstance to finally deliver the reader into a moment as indelible as it is unexpected. Janet Hong's translation glitters like a blade. --Susan Choi Flowers of Mold shows Ha Seong-nan to be a master of the strange story. . . . one is left feeling unsettled, as if something is not right with the world--or, rather (and this latter option becomes increasingly convincing), as if something is not right with you. --Brian Evenson
