Don Mee Choi

Don Mee Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, and lived in Hong Kong before moving to the United States.

Choi is the author of the poetry collections DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016); and The Morning News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), as well as several chapbooks and pamphlets. Of her work, Craig Santos Perez writes, “Choi translates feminist politics into an experimental poetry that demilitarizes, deconstructs, and decolonizes any master narrative.”

Choi is also known for her work as a translator of contemporary Korean poetry, including Kim Hyesoon’s Phantom Pain Wings (New Directions, 2023) and Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018), which received the 2019 Griffin International Poetry Prize, as well as Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream (Action Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the 2015 PEN Poetry in Translation Award. The author of the essay pamphlet Translation is an Anti-neocolonial Mode (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020), Choi also translates for the International Women’s Network Against Militarism.

Choi is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, a Lucien Stryk Translation Prize, and a Whiting Writers Award. In 2023, Choi was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

Choi currently serves as an advisory editor for Action Books: Korean Literature Series and teaches at Renton Technical College in Washington State. In 2019, she was the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program Fellow.