Born and raised in Queens, I encountered a complete culture shock when my Korean-American family moved to the racially homogenous suburbs of Long Island. My new elementary school placed me in ESL classes, and so I grew up with this complicated relationship with language. I resented that I needed to shed my accent to assimilate, but wanted desperately to be better than everyone else at it. Along the way, I unexpectedly fell deeply in love with words, the power of words when we wield them, and how we can use narratives to enact social change.

At Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Baruch, I majored in English and minored in Art History, co-founded Baruch’s first nonfiction journal, and learned poetry under the mentorship of Frost Medalist Grace Schulman. I received first place in the 2016 Sydney Harman Fiction Writing Contest, judged by Amitav Ghosh, for my short story “Muse.”

From October 2016 to October 2018, I worked at an educational nonprofit, teaching creative writing and graphic noveling to children ages 6 to 18. I then edited and published their brilliant and provocative works onto digital literary magazines. I helped organize and run the 2017 and 2018 Governor’s Island Youth Poetry Festival, and I led poetry workshops for incoming Macaulay Honors freshmen.

I then briefly nested in an art museum cubicle before deciding it was finally time to focus on my writing career.

As a storyteller and editor, my goal is to amplify narratives of women minority agency, and to redefine the literary canon. I work as Executive Editor, Copy Chief, and Co-Editor of the Black Allyship @Mochi column for Mochi Magazine, an online destination for Asian American women. My short story “The Kumiho’s Song” was published in the seventh issue of Truancy Magazine, and my poem “secondhand lover” was published in the Summer ’20 issue of Peach Velvet Magazine. My writing has also been featured in Taste of Home magazine and Reader’s Digest.

Currently based in Queens (and sometimes the west coast of Puerto Rico), I spend my days working in CX at a tech startup. I’m working on a novel and learning how to live a greener and more sustainable lifestyle. I live with my partner, a sweet pitbull, two fierce cats, and one or two ghosts.