London Korean Links

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What to look out for in the run-up to the London Book Fair 2014

London Book Fair
Image credit: Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies

The British Council’s and KCCUK’s involvement with the Korea market focus of the London Book Fair will ensure a range of events to examine and promote Korean literature in translation. In fact, the KCC will be focusing on literature all year. And that’s in addition to publishers using the fair as a prompt to publish new titles.

This year’s public events programme will include:

  • a mini film festival at the Korean Cultural Centre, featuring films inspired by literary works;
  • events at Free Word, British Library, The Poetry Library, Asia House and London Review Bookshop in London; and also
  • events around the UK with Cambridge Literary Festival, Edinburgh City Libraries and Wales Literature Exchange.

In addition, the British Council is doing us a service by launching a ‘Writer of the Week’ series on their literature website. Every Tuesday until the start of the festival, they will be featuring one writer from the delegation of 10 with a new biography, original Q&A and links relating to their works. “We hope that these provide new and original content about the writers in English where otherwise there were very limited resources. These pages will be regularly updated so please check back often!” says the British Council’s Rebecca Hart.  The first writer featured is Man Asian Literary Prize winner and author of Please Look After Mother, Kyung-sook Shin.

Finally, the KCCUK recently announced their first Korean literature evening – a book group to discuss Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mother, and we can expect more along these lines.

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