A collection of poems, essays and short stories by the experimental modernist writer Yi Sang has won a U.S. translation award granted by the Modern Language Association.

Breaking the news on Monday, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea said "Yi Sang: Selected Works" is the first South Korean title to win the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work.

"Yi Sang: Selected Works" includes 49 poems, six essays, two short stories and 12 poems written in Japanese by the writer. Yi wrote during 1930s Korea which was then under Japanese colonial rule. He died at the age of 27 from tuberculosis. Yi was also a painter and an architect. 

The Literature Translation Institute of Korea provided support for the work's English publication, with Jack Jung, Don Mee Choi, Joyelle McSweeney providing translation from Korean, and Sawako Nakayasu translating from Japanese.

The prize was established with donations made in 1987 by New York University professor Aldo Scaglione who wanted to remember his wife Jeanne's dedicated efforts in rescuing Jews during World War Two. She had died the previous year.