APAture 2002 : Artists

Featured Artists   |   Participating Artists

Ishle Yi Park : Literary

Ishle Yi Park is a dynamic young poet, teacher and activist who is a rising voice in Asian America. Called "a precious gift from our past, present and future" by K.W. Lee, a veteran news journalist, Ishle addresses issues related to the Asian American experience, women, literature, and culture.

Ishle has performed at over seventy venues across the United States, Cuba and Korea as a solo artist and as part of a pan Asian collective called FeedBack. She is the first Korean American woman ever to compete and feature on the finals stage at the National Poetry Slam. She will be featured on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents: Def Poetry Jam this summer.

Ishle has been published nationally in over 20 anthologies including SLAM, New American Writing, and Beacon Best 2001, edited by Junot Diaz. She has been written about in The Economist, The Black Scholar Review, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and is the subject of two small documentaries on performance poetry. Her first book, entitled The Temperature of this Water, will be published by Kaya Press.

Ishle is the recipient of awards such as a fiction grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts, and a residency from the Hedgebrook Foundation. She won the Grand Slam Championship and Loudpoet of the Year Awards (2000) at Bar 13, and was a winner at the Glam Slam of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe.

As Arts-In-Education Director of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Ishle worked to bring Asian American literature & artists into New York City public high schools. She has taught creative writing in high schools, colleges, prisons, and community centers throughout New York and San Francisco. She currently lives in Oakland, California and teaches poetry to youth with WritersCorps and Youth Speaks.

For APAture

Ishle will be performing a mix of performance poetry, song, and short prose. Her work deals with issues of Korean Amerian identity, sexuality, race, class and gender. She might sing, she might play guitar, or break out the korean drums. More than anything, she hopes to make you laugh, cry, or think.

Links

www.ishle.com