Ed Bok Lee is the author of Real Karaoke People, a national best-seller in poetry and winner of a PEN/Open Book Award, an Asian American Literary Award (Members' Choice Award), and a Many Voices Prize. Lee's second book is entitled Whorled (Coffee House Press, Fall 2011).
Lee was born in Fargo, North Dakota and 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. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. Recognition for his poems, fiction, essays, and plays include grants from the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Loft Literary Center, and National Endowment for the Arts.[1]
He has worked as a bartender, phys ed and ESL instructor, journalist, script writer, and business translator, and shared his various work in journals, anthologies, and on stages across North America, Europe and Asia, as well as on public radio and TV, including MTV. Lee's plays, including Passage, El Santo Americano, and St. Petersburg, have been seen at major regional and national theaters including the Guthrie Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Joseph Papp Public Theater, Theater Mu, Taipei Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and the Walker Art Center.