KSW x Clarion

We're teaming up with Clarion Performing Arts Center, once again, to host the book releases of Franny Choi's "Soft Science" and Ed Bok Lee's Mitochondrial Night. Franny and Ed will be reading from their new collections along with special guest, Julayne Lee, author of "Not My White Savior"! 

FEATURES

Franny Choi is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen Magazine, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. She lives in Hamtramck, MI and teaches poetry through Inside Out Literary Arts.

Ed Bok Lee is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Mitochondrial Night (Coffee House Press, March 2019). The son of North and South Korean emigrants—his mother originally a refugee from what is now North Korea; his father was raised during the Japanese colonial period and Korean War in what is now South Korea, Lee grew up in South Korea, North Dakota, and Minnesota, and was educated there and later on both U.S. coasts, Russia, South Korea, and Kazakhstan. He teaches at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, and also works as an artist, translator, and for two decades has taught in programs for youth and the incarcerated. Honors include the American Book Award, Minnesota Book Award, Asian American Literary Award (Members’ Choice), and a PEN/Open Book Award. www.edboklee.com

Julayne Lee is an overseas adopted Korean American poet, essayist, artivist, art curator and producer. Her debut collection of poems Not My White Savior (2018, Rare Bird) was on Bitch Media's Bitchreads: 15 Books Feminists Should Read in March and Entropy's Best of 2018: Best Poetry Books & Poetry Collections. Not My White Savior has been taught globally in Freshman Lit and Race & Ethnicity university courses. A Las Dos Brujas and VONA alum, Julayne has read and spoken on adoption at universities and symposiums throughout the U.S. & Korea and has an MAEd from Hamline University. @julayneelle www.julaynelee.com