Book Talk with Translator Clare Richards
Date & Time: 16 April 2026 (Thu), 7:00 PM
Venue: Korean Cultural Center
Reservations: link
The Korean Cultural Centre in Brussels will host a book talk with translator Clare Richards, as part of the Korean Literature Exhibition. She translated Another Person by Kang Hwagil and The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon Somin into English — both works featured in the exhibition — and will share insights into Korean literature and translation drawn from her experience as a literary translator.
Another Person is a psychologically incisive novel that follows Jina after she reports her abusive partner and finds herself exposed to intense public scrutiny. As competing narratives emerge and online commentary multiplies, the novel explores how truth becomes refracted through collective interpretation and how identity can be destabilised by the judgements of others. Clare Richards’s translation delicately conveys the novel’s chilling atmosphere and psychological subtlety, while preserving the tonal precision of the original.
The Healing Season of Pottery is a gentle and restorative novel about a protagonist who, after enduring dyslexia, depression, and unemployment, gradually reconnects with others and with herself through the slow, repetitive work of clay in a pottery studio. Richards’s translation captures the novel’s quiet emotional texture and sense of healing, showing how its themes of pain, recovery, and connection can speak to readers across languages and cultures.
Moderated by exhibition curator Eugene Kim, this book talk will bring together the curator’s perspective and the translator’s experience to explore how Korean literature reaches readers around the world through translation, as well as the linguistic and cultural questions that arise in the process. The talk will also explore how the exhibition’s engagement with contemporary sensibilities is reflected in the practice of translation.
About the Speakers:
Clare Richards | Translator
A Korean-to-English literary translator whose work includes novels and essays by authors such as Kang Hwagil, Kim Keum Hee, and Yeon Somin. She co-translated the official BTS book Beyond the Story, and her translation of Kang Hwagil’s The Lake won the Twelfth Jules Chametzky Translation Prize, among other recognitions for her work in translation. Alongside her translation work, she is an active teacher and mentor, and speaks and writes on autism, neurodivergence, and literary translation.
Eugene Kim | Curator & Moderator
A UK-based scholar specialising in transnational literature and aesthetics. She completed her PhD in English Literature at Kingston University. She is Editor-in-Chief of Nabillera, an online magazine dedicated to Korean literature in translation. Her work bridges academic research and public humanities through curation, translation, and international literary events.