Don Mee Choi, Ph.D.

Poet and Translator

Union Institute & University Alumni

Don Mee Choi earned her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Union Institute & University in 2003, with concentrations in Modern Korean Culture and Translation. She is the recipient of the Whiting Award for emerging authors and poets, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, Lucien Stryk Translation Prize, and 2019 DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow.

She is the author of Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016), The Morning News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), and several chapbooks and pamphlets of poems and essays. She has translated several collections of Kim Hyesoon's poetry, including Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), which received the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

The highly prized National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual awards given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers,” with nominations provided only by publishers.

Photo credit: SongGot