The people behind the pages

Peter Liptak is a Midwestern poet, author, translator and the founder of Exile Press. He spent twenty years teaching English to children and adults in South Korea, from preschool classrooms and private lessons to teaching at Incheon University. Living between languages became part of his writing life, and eventually the starting point for a publishing house rooted in Minneapolis and Seoul.

He studied English literature at the University of Minnesota and Korean history at Yonsei University in Seoul. His books move between very different kinds of language: the street-level humor of Korean Slang: As Much as a Rat’s Tail, the everyday expressions of Idiom Attack, and the poems and visual experiments of Letters: Building an Alphabet with Art and Attitude.

Translation is another thread. Peter translated Baek Seok: Poems of the North and the political graphic work The Great Successor. With Little Bear Books, he writes for a different audience: Teddy’s Day and Teddy’s Camp find adventure in ordinary moments, in rhyming stories illustrated by Pascal Biannicleger.

A cyclist and traveler, Peter traces his appetite for exploring back to childhood rides with his sister on oversized yellow bicycles. Later journeys took him through Europe and Asia, into triathlons and desert races. That curiosity also runs through his publishing: an interest in how people speak, what they notice, and what is worth sharing.