Emily Yoon Awarded UChicago Offen Poetry Prize

Word crept up from Hyde Park to 61 West Superior Street today that Emily Yoon was selected by Roger Reeves as the recipient of the 2017 Offen Poetry Prize, which is award by University of Chicago's Program in Poetry and Poetics. Yoon is a PhD candidate at U of C in East Asian Languages and Civilization and holds an MFA from New York University; she is also a contributor to the March issue of Poetry. A snippet from UChicagoNews:

Emily Yoon’s poetry is not meant to be pretty. In writing about gender, race and violence against women, she intertwines the histories of her native Korea and the United States, revealing the painful echoes of the past. It is through such memories Yoon finds a particular beauty.

Navigating these difficult spaces is one of the reasons Yoon, a UChicago graduate student, was selected as this year’s Offen Poetry Prize winner. The prize, given annually by the University’s Program in Poetry and Poetics, is awarded to an established Chicago poet who then selects a UChicago student to read his or her work. This year’s winner, Roger Reeves, selected Yoon for her inventive ability to deal with both the political and the artistic.

“I think she deals with the difficult in some really interesting ways and understands that beauty is in that difficulty,” said Reeves in introducing Yoon last month at a public reading of her poetry. “Her ability to straddle multiple spheres at once, I think she can do so many things. I think she’s doing amazing, amazing work.”

Head to UChicagoNews to hear Yoon read "Bell Theory," which you can read here.