Choi, Young-mi

Born in Seoul in 1961, Choi Young-mi studied Western history (BA) at Seoul National University and art history (MA) at Hongik University. Faced with the atrocities committed by the then dictatorial government of Korea, the author engaged in democratization movement by participating in anti-government protests and collaboratively translating Karl Marx’s Capital during and after her college days. Following the decline of communism in the late 1980′s and subsequent political changes at home and abroad, however, she came to be skeptical of grand narratives and to embrace a more inclusive worldview. The author made her literary debut with the publication of seven poems including In Seokcho in The Quarterly Changbi in 1992. Published in 1994, the first collection of her poems was an instant bestseller. In addition to her two poetry collections, the author has penned the novel Scars and Patterns and essay collections The Melancholy of Time: Choi Young-mi’s European Diary (published by Changbi Publishers), To Whoever Will Read My Diary by Chance, and The Painter’s Accidental Gaze. She has translated Francis Bacon in Conversation with Michel Archimbaud into Korean and a selection of her poems has been translated into English in Three Poets of Modern Korea (Sarabande Books).