Anton Hur

Hello everyone!

Tinyletter was shut down, so I moved the newsletter to Substack, but then Substack got mired in far-right politics, so I looked high and low for a new platform until deciding to just convert the rarely used blog on my website into a newsletter. Please bear with me!

What’s coming up

I’m supposed to constantly remind you that my debut novel Toward Eternity is coming this July from HarperVia. It has a precise release date—7/9—but years of experience has taught me that bookstores often just put books out whenever they get them, so do pre-order in case it just shows up two weeks early. We’ve moved a lot of units to independent bookstores, so if possible, do choose your local independent to pre-order. Did I say pre-order enough times?

Unboxing video for the author’s copies of Toward Eternity! I look like hell because I had just flown back from teaching at Bread Loaf:

My US tour dates are up! Please come see me in New York, Boston, and LA so that my interlocutors and I are not speaking to a bunch of empty seats *crying emoji*:

• JULY 9TH @ 6PM EST New York, Yu and Me Books with Joseph Osmundson
• JULY 10TH @ 7PM Boston, Brookline Booksmith with Michelle Min Sterling
• JULY 12TH @ 7PM Los Angeles, Vroman’s Bookstore with Elise Hu

The next book out of the gate for 2024 is I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, published again by Bloomsbury in the UK (June) and US (August). I think the first book is nearing ten million copies sold in all language editions. Can you imagine? Check out my sockbokki video.

A criticism of the original Tteokbokki book I keep coming across is of the psychiatrist, that they seem a little harsh and unfeeling. I think the tone the psychiatrist has in real life is Refreshingly No-BS Let’s-Shake-It-All-Off-type No-Nonsense Briskness, not I’m-Going-to-Hold-Your-Hand-No-Matter-What-type Good Cop Squishiness. The psychiatrist is effective not because they coddle their patient but because they make the patient confront their defense mechanisms. Everyone needs a different kind of approach, and the patient in Tteokbokki needs this one.

Random book thoughts

Someone recently accused Cursed Bunny of having been a New York Times bestseller. Do your research! There have been only two Korean NYT bestsellers ever, and that’s Please Look After Mom and Beyond the Story (I have confirmed this with one of the people at the Times who are directly responsible for compiling the list). None of the other usual suspects—The Vegetarian, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly, Kim Jiyoung Born in 1982—were ever on the NYT list. It’s not such an easy list to get on!

That same someone then said Pachinko was on the list and I’m like, that’s an American book! Goddamn. So disrespectful to Min Jin Lee, who put so much care into each sentence in that book (although the novel being misconstrued as a translation could be a testament to its authentic resonance?).

This did make me wonder—would Toward Eternity be considered a Korean book or an American one? Korean speculative fiction legend Kim Bo-young in a recent article declared that “Whatever Koreans write is Korean.” And also:

I have sometimes heard that SF is the literature of Empire. They say that SF tells the stories of powerful nations who dominate the world, who have a sense of adventure and pioneering spirit, and usually center elite white male protagonists who conquer space as they conquered the world, fighting wars and settling on new planets. I have also heard that there may be limitations to what can be imagined in Korean SF literature because Korea does not have that colonizing history. I do not agree. Fortunately, since we have not taken part in the horrors of imperialism, we can write stories that those who do have that history would never be able to write.

—translated by Victoria Caudle

If Kim Bo-young thinks my work is Korean, that’s good enough for me.

Some more stuff

• Paperback edition of Counterweight unboxing! Also remembered I did this neato Instagram live with the fabulous Victoria Caudle about her translation of Dolki Min’s Walking Practice along with Counterweight.
• There’s supposed to be a new Bora Chung short story up on Words Without Borders but I can’t delay this newsletter any longer waiting for it, sorry! Here’s the most recent one, from Your Utopia. Sign up for their newsletter!
• I think I’m doing an “Instagram takeover” of the HarperVia account on June 28th? I’m going to talk about stationery and the endpapers for my novel, the geek stuff!
• I did a bunch of translations for the current Korean Literature Now, most notably these Kim So Yeon poems. I’m going to try to sell her book as well—who knows when I can put together that submission, but I’ve got persmission!
• My Bread Loaf reading and lecture for this year are up! My 2022 lecture and reading are also up so check it out. I adore Bread Loaf, met so many great new translators this time around as well and reconnected with old friends.
• Have you read my Twitter thread on how I met my agent?

That’s it for now ❤