Franny Choi | |
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Franny Choi performing at a poetry slam | |
Born | February 11, 1989 |
Occupation | Poet |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Genre | Slam poetry |
Franny Choi (born February 11, 1989)[ citation needed ] is an American writer, poet and playwright. [1]
Choi uses she and they pronouns. [1] She lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, and now resides in Greenfield, Massachusetts. [2] [3] Choi's parents are Choi Inyeong and Nam Songeun. [4] She is Korean-American. In high school, Choi was introduced to the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and became interested in poetry's spoken form. In college, she joined a group for marginalized spoken poets, called WORD!, which was her introduction to slam poetry. [5]
Choi graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Literary Arts and Ethnic Studies in 2011 and received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. [6] After graduating, she became a co-director of the Providence Poetry Slam. She founded the Dark Noise Collective with Fatimah Asghar, Danez Smith, Jamila Woods, Nate Marshall, and Aaron Samuels in 2012. [2]
Choi worked for Hyphen, a non-profit Asian-American culture magazine, as a senior editor. She was co-host, with Danez Smith, of the podcast VS. [2] She was a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow in English at Williams College; in 2022 she joined the undergraduate Literature Faculty at Bennington College. [7] [8]
Choi is a two-time winner of the Rustbelt Poetry Slam. [9] In 2020, Soft Science won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association's Elgin Award. [10]
Choi promotes social activism through her poetry and writing. [11] In her poem "Whiteness Walks Into A Bar", she highlights institutionalized racism in the United States. [12] Other poems, like "furiosa", focus on feminism. [13] Choi curated a series of video poems by 12 queer Asian American and Pacific Islander poets for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. [14]