Biography

Born in 1933, KO UN is an internationally celebrated poet, and has published more than 140 volumes of poetry and other writings, including the monumental, thirty-volume Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) series. His work has been translated into every major language. English translations of poems selected from the first ten Maninbo volumes were published by Green Integer Press in 2005, in an edition entitled Ten Thousand Lives. Other translations of his work include Flowers of a Moment (BOA, 2006); a new edition of his Zen poems What? (Parallax Press, 2008); and Songs for Tomorrow (Green Integer Press, 2008). His Himalaya Poems are also forthcoming from Green Integer. Read more at www.koun.co.kr.

BROTHER ANTHONY OF TAIZÉ was born in England in 1942 and has been living in Korea since 1980. He has taught English literature at Sogang University (Seoul) for many years and is now an emeritus professor there, as well as a chair-professor at Dankook University. He has published more than 25 volumes of English translations of modern Korean literature, including six volumes by Ko Un. His Korean name is An Sonjae.

LEE SANG-WHA is a professor of English Literature at JoongAng University. Her specialty is utopias in literature and she has published a study of British utopian novels in the 20th century. She has also translated a number of literary works from English into Korean, including works by Gary Snyder.