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Don Mee Choi

b. 1962

Korean-American poet, translator

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About Don Mee Choi

Born 1962. Don Mee Choi is an American poet, writer and translator.

Don Mee Choi (; born 1962 ) is a Korean-American poet and translator.

Life Don Mee Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, educated in the United States, and now lives in Berlin, Germany. Choi's works of documentary poetry draw on family history as well as archival material to interrogate "the overlapping histories of Korea and the U.S." In addition to her own poetry, she is a prolific translator of modern Korean women poets, including several books by Kim Hyesoon.

Awards 2011: Whiting Award 2012: Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize for All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon 2016: Lannan Literary Fellowship Award 2019: Griffin Poetry Prize Award for translation of Autobiography of Death from the Korean written by Kim Hyesoon 2020: National Book Award for Poetry for DMZ Colony 2021: Guggenheim Fellowship Poetry 2021: MacArthur Fellows Program 2021: Royal Society of Literature International Writer 2025: shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize for Mirror Nation

Works

Books The Morning News is Exciting, Action Books, 2010, Petite Manifesto, Vagabond Press, 2014 (chapbook) Freely Frayed,ᄏ=q, & Race=Nation, Wave Books, 2014 (chapbook) Sky Translation, Goodmorning Menagerie A Chapbook Press, n.d. (chapbook) Hardly War, Wave Books, 2016 DMZ Colony, Wave Books, 2020 Mirror Nation, Wave Books, (Publication date 4/2/24)

Translations Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2005 Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women, Zephyr Press, 2006 All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2011 Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, Action Books, 2014 I'm OK, I'm Pig! by Kim Hyesoon, Bloodaxe Books, 2014 Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, Bloodaxe Books, 2018 (winner of the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize) Ahn Hak-sŏp #4 by Ahn Hak-sŏp and Don Mee Choi, The Green Violin, 2018 (chapbook) Yi Sang: Selected Works by Yi Sang, ed. Don Mee Choi, Wave Books, 2020

Anthology Yasuhiro Yotsumoto Ming Di Don Mee Choi, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Hyesoon Kim, Trilingual Renshi, Vagabond Press, 2015,

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Important facts

Born
1962, Seoul
Birth century
Nationality
Awards
Guggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; National Book Award; MacArthur Fellow

People in Don Mee Choi's life

Named in this biography and alive at the same time

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Don Mee Choi's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Don Mee Choi?

Korean-American poet, translator

When was Don Mee Choi born?

Don Mee Choi was born in 1962 in Seoul.

What is Don Mee Choi's occupation?

Don Mee Choi is a poet, writer and translator.

What nationality is Don Mee Choi?

Don Mee Choi is American.

Sources & further reading

· Wikipedia: Don Mee Choi

· Wikidata: Q20880969

· DBpedia: Don Mee Choi

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Don Mee Choi. https://biography.guide/don-mee-choi/

MLA: "Don Mee Choi." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/don-mee-choi/.

Chicago: "Don Mee Choi." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/don-mee-choi/.

Data last updated: 2026-09-20 · Spot an error? Report a correction.

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