영어영문학부

"Linking Bucheon and Dublin Cities of Literature through the short story "Sister" by Claire Keegan, part of the Seoda project"

The workshop linking Bucheon and Dublin Cities of Literature through a story was held at the Bucheon City Yeokgok Library on the 16th of January, 2023. This workshop was a follow-up event for the UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature collaborative project called the Seoda, after the word for “Jewels” in Irish, which was led by Dublin City of literture in partnership with Literature Ireland.

The project aimed to promote five Irish short stories, the “jewels” in question through translation to UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature in Korea, Portugal, Canada, and Iceland. The short story “Sister” by Claire Keegan, first published in her collection Antarctica in 1999, was first translated into Korean in Bucheon City by literary translator Jiyang Noh.

Four students and a professor, Joohyun Park from the English Literature department of the Catholic University of Korea were invited to talk about “Sister” after reading it in both English and Korean. The translator, Jiyang Noh, was also in attendance at this workshop.

Bucheon will continue to promote this project by freely distributing the story to those who are interested in reading it once the “Sister” booklet designed by Literature Ireland is published.

Although Ireland is widely known for its rich literary heritage, less contemporary Irish literature has made it into the Korean mainstream compared to the amount of contemporary American literature popular there. We hope this will contribute to expanding the scope of literature in Korea.

The Korean translation of Claire Keegan’s latest work, Small Things Like These, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, is expected to be published in 2023. Jiyang Noh stressed that Claire’s other short story collections are also excellent and will hopefully also one day be translated into Korean.