THIS IS KYO LEE
Kyo Lee (she) is a Korean Canadian student and writer from Waterloo, Ontario.Her debut poetry collection i cut my tongue on a broken country was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in March, 2025.She is the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and youngest finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Her literature also appears in Narrative, Nimrod, Prism, The Forge, and This Magazine, among others.She loves summer peaches, yearning, and oceans.
Kyo will NOT respond on Instagram. She WILL respond on email.
KYO WROTE A BOOK
Lotus flowers, youthful hunger, and other temporary beauties intertwine to tell this coming-of-age story, a set of pulsating poems that move toward a distant memory or a flaming future.Kyo Lee's intimate debut poetry collection is simultaneously a vulnerable confession and a micro study of macro topics including lineage, family, war, and hope. i cut my tongue on a broken country explores the Asian American diaspora, girlhood, and the relationships between and within them, pushing and pulling on the boundaries of identity and language like a story trying to tell itself.i cut my tongue on a broken country documents a search for love. It's a eulogy for the things we gave up to get here. It's an ode to tenderness. It blossoms and bleeds in your hands.
KYO WROTE OTHER THINGS
Select Poems
Lotus Flower Blooming into Breasts, CBC Books (2023)Why I Have Decided to Live, Narrative (2024)Parallel & Fish Market Wedding, Nimrod (Refuge, Vol. 67 No. 2, 2024)You step out of the coin karaoke, All Lit Up Tributaries (2025)diasporic dissonance, Writer's Trust (2023)
JUDGE KYO'S MUSIC TASTE
Consider this playlist proof that there are infinite ways to give & recieve the same story. Consider it an attempt to translate what could not be held with language alone. Consider how the curation and order of the songs is a poem of its own, a story with its own heart synching to the collection's separate heartbeat. Consider it something a cute little thing she did instead of writing.