News Article

The 2008-2009 Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series continues next week when heralded poet Li-Young Lee will read his works at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 3, in the Globe Room of Cataldo Hall on the Gonzaga campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Earlier Feb. 3, Lee will take part in question-and-answer sessions: 9:30-10:45 a.m., at the Magnuson Theatre Auditorium (in College Hall; free and open to the public) and from 3:30-4:45 p.m. in the Foley Center Teleconference Room (for the GU community only).

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being “Behind My Eyes” (W.W. Norton, 2008). His earlier acclaimed collections were: “Book of My Nights” (BOA Editions, 2001); “Rose” (BOA, 1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University; “The City in Which I Love You” (BOA, 1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir entitled “The Winged Seed: A Remembrance” (Simon and Schuster, 1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 1988 he received the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. He is also featured in Katja Esson's documentary, “Poetry of Resilience.”

Born in 1957 to Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee learned early about loss and exile. His great-grandfather was China’s first republican president; his father, a deeply religious Christian, was physician to Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Lee's parents escaped to Indonesia. A decade later, his father, after spending a year in jail as a political prisoner, fled Indonesia with his family to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. After a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.

For more information, contact Gonzaga associate English Professor Tod Marshall at (509) 313-6681 or via e-mail.