Bora Chung

Chung Bora (born 1976) is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Life and career
Chung Bora was born in 1976, in Seoul. Her parents were dentists. She completed graduate studies in Russian and East European area studies at Yale University, then went on to gain a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University Bloomington. She taught the Russian language, literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University. She is a social activist.

Chung has written three novels and three collections of short stories. She lists as her literary influences the works of Park Wan-suh, Bruno Schulz, Bruno Jasieński, Andrei Platonov and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, as well as Samguk yusa folktales. In 1998, she won a Yonsei Literature Prize for her short story The Head. She is also a recipient of second prizes at the Digital Literature Awards (2008) and Gwacheon Science Center SF Awards (2014).

In 2022, the English edition of her short story collection Cursed Bunny translated by Anton Hur was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. The ten stories borrow from different genres, including magical realism, horror and science fiction. In September 2023 the book was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

In January 2024, another short story collection of hers, Your Utopia, came out in English translation, as did the novella Grocery List from Hanuman Books in June 2024, both also translated into English by Anton Hur, who has announced that her novel, Red Sword, will be published in English translation in 2025. Another novel of hers, Midnight Timetable, will be published in English translation in 2026. All will be rendered by Hur.

Chung translates contemporary prose from Russian and Polish into Korean.