The Cheapest France in Town

 

from The Cheapest France in Town

Seo Jung Hak

translated from the Korean

by Megan Sungyoon

 

20 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Cheapest France in Town on Etsy. 

Seo Jung Hak was born in Seoul and graduated from Seoul Institute of the Arts’ Creative Writing program. Seo debuted in the Korean literary scene by publishing four poems including “은신처” (“Hideout”) in the Winter 1995 issue of 문학과 사회 (Literature and Society). His first book, 모험의 왕과 코코넛의 귀족들  (The King of Adventure and Aristocrats of Coconut) was published in 1998. 동네에서 제일 싼 프랑스  (The Cheapest France in Town) is his second book, published in 2017.

Megan Sungyoon translates between languages and across disciplines. Sungyoon’s efforts have appeared in Asymptote, Columbia Journal, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and SAND Journal, among others. As of 2020, Sungyoon lives a street away from Seoul, bordering the United States.

 

Read--and listen to--a couple poems from The Cheapest France in Town at Asymptote, where they were published earlier this year. Sungyoon writes in her translator's note, "The Cheapest encourages misreading. With its subtly unconventional uses of punctuation, plays with homonyms/homophones, and distorted subjecthood, The Cheapest is rather disinterested in identifying itself with a certain nation-state. A Korean reader may argue the poems are unmistakably Korean, but what is Korean, anyways?"

Big announcement!

We are delighted to announce that Toad Press is now an imprint of Veliz Books!

As an imprint of Veliz Books, Toad Press will be able to expand its reach and get our translations into the hands of more readers. We’ll be able to better get the word out about your Toad Press titles, and we’ll have a larger platform for promotion. 

We’ll continue making your chapbooks available for purchase on Submittable, and we’ll keep using this blog and updating our Toad Press facebook page. In addition, we now have a Toad Press tab on the Veliz Books site, and a selection of our chapbooks is available for purchase in the Veliz Books store. 

Our partnership is a win-win! It means our presses, which already have so much in common, can participate together in the literary world: at conferences, readings, and events. Together, we look forward to continuing to support exciting, literary writing and cheering on our authors and translators. 

Read more about our partnership: "Working Alone, Working Together" in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics

 

 

Codex of the Insane

Codex of the Insane (Body and Related Matters)

Bronka Nowicka

translated from the Polish

by Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi

 

 23 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00 

cover image by Małgorzata ET BER Warlikowska

You can purchase a copy of Codex of the Insane on Etsy.

BRONKA (BRONISŁAWA) NOWICKA is a Polish theatre and TV director, screenwriter, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. She is a graduate of the National Film School in Łódź, Poland, and the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Her literary debut, Nakarmić kamień (To Feed the Stone) was awarded the 2016 Nike Literary Award and the Złoty Środek Poezji (Golden Mean of Poetry) award. In 2017, she was a laureate of the New Voices from Europe project. Her second book, Kodeks Pomylonych (Codex of the Insane), was published in 2020, and To Feed the Stone will be published in a bilingual edition by Dalkey Archive Press in 2021.

KATARZYNA SZUSTER-TARDI is a translator. Forthcoming translations include the books To Feed the Stone by Bronka Nowicka (Dalkey Archive Press, 2021) and Polish Literature and Genocide by Arkadiusz Morawiec (Routledge, 2021). She earned her M.A. in English studies from the University of Łódź, Poland, and was a lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, University of Nizwa in Oman. Recent translations have appeared in Denver Quarterly, LIT, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tripwire, Berlin Quarterly, and Seedings.

 

Toad Press + SMOL Fair

 

Join us for SMOL Fair, an alternative, virtual book fair  'live' from March 3-7, 2021!

Learn more about SMOL Fair on their website -- and don't forget to sign up for their mailing list for your chance to win free books from participating presses!

Toad Press is giving away some excellent chapbooks: The Tears (Olivia Rosenthal / Beatrice Mousli), The Night's Belly (Sara Tuss Efrik / Paul Cunningham), and Two-Step: A Boolean Comedrama (Jacques Jouet & Olivier Salon / Emma Ramadan & Chris Clarke)! 

And, we're offering a SMOLFAIR special: you can order 2 chapbooks for $10, including shipping during SMOL Fair! A great deal! Order here, March 1-7, 2021.

2021 Chapbook Series

We are delighted to share that the Toad Press International chapbook series will publish three new translations this year:

Codex of the Insane (Body and Related Matters), poems by Bronka Nowicka 

translated by Katarzyna Szuster

The Cheapest France in Town, poems by Seo Jung Hak

translated by Megan Sungyoon

Faith in Strangers, poems by Katarzyna Szaulińska 

translated by Mark Tardi

Look for these titles coming your way in Summer / Fall 2021.  

Thank you to all who submitted your work -- we are grateful to have had the opportunity to read so many wonderful translations during our recent open reading period!