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Deborah Smith (Literary Translation, 2016)The Vegetarian

Deborah Smith

Fellow in 2016 for Literary Translation

Deborah is a literary translator specialising in contemporary Korean fiction, and a publisher. She was born in Doncaster in 1987, and began learning Korean in 2010. Her translations include three books by Han Kang – The Vegetarian, Human Acts and The White Book – and four by Bae Suah – A Greater Music, Recitation, North Station, and Untold Night and Day.

In 2015 Deborah founded Tilted Axis, a non-profit press focusing on translations from Asian languages, and which has published 16 books and 4 chapbooks as of early 2020.

These days she is taking time out to think about new ways of supporting translation as an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist practice. Currently in the works are a mentoring scheme, an anthology, and a climate-related project provisionally titled understories. She is nomadic, spending part of each year in Seoul, and has spent most of her life in South Yorkshire.