The Literature Translation Institute of Korea, with support from the Korean Ministry of Culture, awarded alumna E. J. Koh ’13 the 2022 Translation Grand Prize in recognition of her translation of Yi Won's poetry collection, The World's Lightest Motorcycle, alongside the poet Marci Calabretta.
“We belong to the poets and translators who came before us, we belong to our teachers like Don Mee Choi, and we believe in sharing our work as well as our lives,” Koh said on Twitter after winning the prize. “Translation is an act of love—and we hope to continue to bring Korean poetry to touch the world in this way.”
Additionally, the Korean American Coalition of Washington honored E. J. Koh with the 2022 Artistic Achievement Award. “The award recognizes an outstanding Korean American for achievement in the visual/performing arts and creative industries,” the Korean American Coalition said in a statement last October. “Your creative writings have contributed to furthering the mission of KAC-WA, which is to strengthen and empower the KA community."
Koh, a poet, novelist, and screenwriter, is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020). The book won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, the 2021 Washington State Book Award for biography/memoir, and the 2022 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. It was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. She’s currently working for Apple TV’s Pachinko, an adaptation of the epic historical novel by Min Jin Lee. The story follows a Korean family across different generations. Koh’s debut novel is scheduled for next fall. She’s also preparing a libretto for an opera adaptation of filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden.
E. J. Koh is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in English Literature, studying Korean American literature, history, and film. Her poems, stories, and translations have appeared in AGNI, The Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, POETRY, Slate, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing and Literary Translation in Korean and Japanese.
