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Kyo Lee

General Intro:

Kyo Lee is a Korean-Canadian writer, student, and social activist (Writer’s Trust, n.d). She grew up in Abbotsford, BC, Canada (Hopes, 2023) and currently attends Laurel Heights Secondary School in Waterloo, Ontario (Gee, 2023). Having only completed grade 11 (Gee, 2023), she has been writing poetry for many years and was recognized by various notable groups for her literary works (Santos-Vieira, 2023). Being a queer, Korean-Canadian she has a unique cross-sectional experience that she draws from in her poetry, exploring concepts such as family, gender, sexuality, queerness, culture, love, intergenerational effects of war, colonialism, and identity just to name a few (Santos-Vieira, 2023).

Writing Journey:

Kyo Lee understands art as an adventure of self-discovery and hope (Writer’s Trust, n.d). Although most of her writing occurs outside of the school setting, her work can be largely attributed to the school experience and environment, wherein she takes most of her inspiration from the people within it (Lee, 2024). Special recognition of her eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Haramis for his integral role in her writing journey - Lee once said that she owes all of her literary success to Mr. Haramis (Lee, 2024).

Besides the school environment, peers, and teachers, Lee also finds inspiration through reading other literature. Some of the books she has read throughout her writing process include but are not limited to: Closer Baby Closer by Savannah Brown, crush by Richard Siken, and Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Lee, 2024). Her favourite author is John Green, for providing her not only literary influence but also supporting her through her personal life (Lee, 2024).

Her Work:

Most notable of her works is the poem “lotus flower blooming into breasts”, which won the CBC Poetry Prize making Lee the youngest ever winner of this prize (Gee, 2023). She received $1000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a publication in CBC books (Gee, 2023). The finalists for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize were selected by the jury of Joseph A. Dandurand, Catherine Graham, and Tolu Oloruntoba (Santos-Vieira, 2023). They describe Lee’s “lotus flower blooming into breasts” as the following:

"In lotus flower blooming into breasts, the speaker holds hope, love, conflict, desire, defiance, history and the present, violence and wistfulness and the ways humans fail each other, in a shimmering tension that does not collapse into sentimentality. Documentary in nature, the tercets that constitute this poem offer confrontational and speculative flourishes that flare like 'burns blooming' beside ponds 'overflowing with hunger.' The efficiency of each line and the balletic twinge of each successive stanza are effective vehicles for admirable feats of craft and reader transport”. (Santos-Vieira, 2023)

Her work has since been recognized or published by various significant groups including Nimrod International, University of Toronto, Ringling College, New York Times, the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award (Hopes, 2023), and League of Canadian Poets (Writer’s Trust, n.d).

Kyo Lee has also been recognized for her non-fiction essay titled Parachute Kid, where she speaks about language and the interactive relationship people have with it, simultaneously shaping each other (Mitchell, 2024). Parachute Kid also explores the meaning of home, specifically under the context of being a diasporic Korean student, living away from home and how ‘home’ manifests itself in different ways for different people. This particular piece was inspired by the first page of Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner (Mitchell, 2024) - a book that follows the journey of a young diasporic Korean woman as she navigates the push and pulls of building a life away from her homeland and determining what that means for her identity (Goodreads, n.d).  

Lee published a five page anthology of poems titled Diasporic Dissonance (Writer’s Trust, n.d.). This particular piece was awarded the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 2023. Diasporic Dissonance is described by the judging jury of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award as:

“Sometimes vulnerable, sometimes fierce, sometimes both, Kyo Lee asks urgent questions about language, race, family, and beauty. Rich, sensuous imagery thrums with tension; innovative metaphors offer readers a bump of serotonin even as they invite us to imaginatively inhabit the shifting and often uncomfortable in-between spaces of diasporic dissonance” (Writer’s Trust, n.d.).

While she incorporates and explores a wide variety of concepts and themes in her work, Lee aims to make love a common theme that she focuses on in all her writing (Mitchell, 2024).