Ed Bok Lee

Early life and education

Lee was raised in South Korea, North Dakota and Minnesota. He studied Slavic and Central Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota; Kazakh State Al-Farabi University in Almaty, Kazakhstan; Indiana University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in Slavic Languages and Literatures. He later received a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University.

Poetry and other writings

Lee primarily writes poetry, though other published works include lyric prose, plays, short stories, and what he has referred to as “poelogues,” which derive technical elements from and often fall between poetry, the dramatic monologue, the soliloquy, and the duologue. Initially influenced by the poetry of Yi Sang, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Bertold Brecht, and Ai, since first visiting Los Angeles in 1992 then living throughout Russia and Central Asia from 1993 to 1995, Lee’s poelogues have included accounts from a wide range of points of view: a Korean youth killed in the 1992 L.A. Riots, the younger son of an Asian immigrant grocer, a Soviet-Afghan Muslim war rebel, the first rhinoceros in space, a professional blackjack player, a professional wrestler, a Vietnamese mail order bride, an inter-dimensional being, a Korean clone, a U.S. Iraq War veteran, a U.S. Iraq War veteran’s wife, conscripted Mongol foot soldiers, a DMT molecule, an immeasurable field in the multiverse, an Asian American male porn star, a Korean prostitute, a shaman, an undefined particle within Dark Matter, a Hmong American hunter accused of murder (inverted poelogue), a meth cook, Asian carp (invasive species), a Norway Maple tree (invasive species), English Ivy (invasive species), an opium poppy farmer, Prince (music icon), among others.

Other publications, literary arts, and work

His various work has appeared in journals such as Fence, Gulf Coast, Diode, The Normal School, Tupelo Quarterly, Water~Stone Review, Copper Nickel, Volt, Idaho Review, Gwangju Daily (Gwangju, South Korea), Koryo Ilbo (Almaty, Kazakhstan), among many others, as well as in anthologies and at venues ranging from the American Swedish Institute (solo literary art exhibit) to the Walker Art Center, New York Theater Workshop, Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Guthrie Theater (play commissions/performances), to the ELLAK (English Language and Literature Association of Korea) Conference, Ewha University (Seoul), First Avenue, Treasure Hill Tea and Photo Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan), Chonnam University (Gwangju), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Ex Teresa Arts Actual (Mexico City), AAAS (Association of Asian American Studies Conference) (Washington, DC), ALA (American Library Association Annual Conference) (Chicago), Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival, and PEN America (NYC) (Featured Poetry Readings and Panels), among many others. He teaches part-time at Metropolitan State University.^{[4]citation needed}