Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong is a Korean American poet, writer, and professor who has published three volumes of poetry. Much of her work includes mixed language and serialized narrative. She was named on the 2021 Time 100 list for her writings and advocacy for Asian American women.

Life Hong, a child of Korean parents, was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Oberlin College and has an MFA from Iowa Writers' Workshop.

She taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Rutgers University, and UC Berkeley, and was previously poetry editor for The New Republic.

Work Hong is, according to J.P. Eburne's summary of her poetic approach, "dedicated to expanding and experimenting with the capacities of a living art. Her writing, editing, and performances across media seek to open up the 'interactive possibilities' of poetry for the sake of providing 'alternative ways of living within the existing real', as she puts it. 'What are ways in which the poetic praxis can be a ritual for social experimentation? The poem as a public encounter is entrenched in habit. How many ways can we change this encounter?

Hong's books of poems include Translating Mo'um (2002), Dance Dance Revolution (2007), and Engine Empire (2012). Her poems have appeared in A Public Space, Paris Review, Poetry, Web Conjunctions, jubilat, and Chain, among others. She has also written articles for publications like The Village Voice, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times Magazine. In 2002, she won a Pushcart Prize for Translating Mo'um and she won the 2006 Barnard Women Poets Prize.

She was named on the 2021 Time 100 list for her writings and advocacy for Asian American women.

When asked about the unusual language in the book, Hong commented, As far as the language, I was reading a lot of linguistic theory at the time, particularly on this idea of Creole as a language that is in transition. French, for instance, was a Creole of Latin before it became the "official" language. English is always in transition, although the Standard version is more likely to be frozen in its glass cube. But spoken, English is a busy traffic of dialects, accents, and slang words going in and out of fashion. Slang is especially fascinating. I love outdated slang dictionaries — these words are artifacts that tell you the mindset and squeamish taboos of a certain milieu during a certain time period. I wanted the English in the book to be a hyperbole of that everyday dynamism of spoken English. Organized around seven essays and addressing different acts of racial discrimination, Minor Feelings uses Hong's life experiences and feelings to demonstrate what it is like living as part of a marginalized community in the capitalist United States of America. The book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. In 2021, Greta Lee and A24 were reported to be working on an adaptation of the book.

Awards 2002: Pushcart Prize for Translating Mo'Um 2018: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Poetry 2020: National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

Other awards include a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships.