Spoken word artist Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai has been featured in over 450
performances worldwide at venues including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the
House of Blues, the Apollo Theater, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and
three seasons of the award-winning “Russell Simmons Presents HBO Def
Poetry.” The author of
Inside Outside Outside Inside (2004),
Thought Crimes (2005),
No Sugar Please (2008), and the CD’s
Infinity Breaks (2007) and
Further She Wrote
(2010), Tsai has shared stages with Mos Def, KRS-One, Sonia Sanchez,
Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, Amiri Baraka, Harry Belafonte, and many more.
(
www.yellowgurl.com)
http://www.yellowgurl.com/
Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based Chinese
Taiwanese American spoken word artist who fights for cultural pride and
survival through how she spits and how she lives. As a teenager, Kelly
developed a passion for spoken word at the birthplace of the
international poetry slam movement, the Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago.
She also appeared as a series regular on PBS’ “Sneak Previews” and wrote
weekly for the Chicago Tribune as a teen movie critic.
Her love of poetry, politics, arts, and entertainment deepened as she
flexed her skills as a founding member of Sirenz, an all female spoken
word group that wove together experiences of the Asian, Black, and
Latina American diasporas. Over the last ten years, she has become one
of the country’s leading innovators of spoken word poetry. Touring
extensively worldwide, she has featured at over 450 shows across the
continental United States, Hawai’i, Canada, China, England, France,
Germany, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Trinidad.
A highly sought-after performer on the college circuit, Kelly’s
inciting, intimate, and entertaining poetry performances have rocked
stages at venues like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the House of Blues, the
Apollo Theater in Harlem, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and
three consecutive seasons of the Peabody award-winning “Russell Simmons
Presents HBO Def Poetry.”
Kelly has shared stages with Mos Def, KRS-One, Sonia Sanchez, Erykah
Badu, Jill Scott, Talib Kweli, DMX, Michael Eric Dyson, Wyclef Jean,
Tracy Morgan, Amiri Baraka, Abiodun Oyewele of the Last Poets, Kurtis
Blow, Harry Belafonte, and many more. Throughout her evolution as a
writer, performer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary hip hop theater
artist, Kelly constantly strives to broaden the impact and reach of
spoken word poetry in its efforts to transform political realities,
revolutionize arts and entertainment, and empower audiences across the
globe.
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES
Kelly has won a number of awards and residencies for her work as a
spoken word artist. In 2004, the Illinois Arts’ Council awarded her the
Governors’ International Exchange Award to support her attendance at
the 6th Women Playwrights International Conference in Manila,
Philippines. In 2007, she was awarded the Urban Artists Initiative NYC
Award by the Asian American Arts Alliance and New York Foundation for
the Arts. In 2008, Idealist in NYC named Kelly as one of their “New
York 40″ of the top New Yorkers who make a positive impact in the five
boroughs. Kelly was a finalist for a Creative Capital Fellowship in
Performing Arts in 2009, which recognizes innovative artists who are at a
catalytic moment in their careers. AngryAsianMan.com listed her as one
of “The 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30″ in 2009. In
2010, she was profiled in the HBO documentary, “East of Main Street:
Asians Aloud.” In 2011, she was named an Asian Women Giving Circle
Grantee for her spoken word theater project, “Say You Heard My Echo.”
Her solo residencies include Hedgebrook, the Norcroft Retreat for
Women Writers, Michigan State University Residential College for Arts
& Humanities, and Unit One/Allen Hall, in addition to New World
Theater’s Summer Playlab, the Asian Arts Initiative, and the Abrons Arts
Center via her work with Mango Tribe. She is a proud alum of the
Kundiman Asian American Poets Retreat, the Voices of Our Nation
Foundation Writers of Color Workshop, the Cave Canem Workshop, and the
Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. In 2007, she attended and performed
at the World Social Forum in Nairobi Kenya as a delegate representing
the Hip Hop Theater Festival. She was also the youngest poet featured
at the first International Conference on Chinese Poetry at Simmons
College in 2004. She has received funding from Poets & Writers,
Inc. in support of her creative work and has been a juror on panels for
the Her Mark Poetry Contest, Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers,
Leeway Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and Brooklyn Arts
Council.
ON THE STAGE
Kelly was a part of the original collective for Mango Tribe, an Asian
Pacific Islander American women’s multidisciplinary spoken word theater
troupe. She wrote, performed, and choreographed for Mango Tribe’s
three mainstage productions (“Sisters in the Smoke” (2002), “The
Creation Myth Project” (2004), and “Un/knowing Desire and Empire”
(2006)), as well as Mango Tribe’s national tour from 2002-2006.
In 2004, Kelly joined the original cast for We Got Issues!, an
arts-based civic transformation project based on feminine centered
leadership for the hip hop generation. Conceived by Rha Goddess and J.
Love Calderon and executive produced by Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda, Kelly
choreographed and performed for the national tour of We Got Issues!
from 2005-2007. In 2007, Kelly also performed in acclaimed theater
artist Ping Chong & Co.’s “Undesirable Elements: Asian America” for
the 1st National Asian American Theater Festival.
Kelly’s spoken word and dance works include Urban Bush Women’s “Are
We Democracy?” (2004), InSpirit’s “Becoming” (2004) and “roam – a solo
in two voices” (2007) by Malinda Allen, and VTDance’s award-winning “The
Grandmother Project,” (2006). She also choreographed Julia Ahumada
Grob’s solo show “He(R)evolution” (2006). In 2006, her ensemble drama
“Murder the Machine” was excerpted at the Chicago Hip Hop Theater
Festival. In 2009, she co-wrote and performed the critically lauded
“American Ethnic” for Chicago’s Remy Bumppo Theater Company. In 2010,
she co-wrote and performed the ensemble work “Home: Far & Near” for
Philadelphia’s Asian Arts Initiative and performed in Howard Zinn’s
“Voices Of A People’s History of the United States” with Harry Belafonte
and Allison Moorer for New York University. Kelly is currently the
2011-2012 Urban Word NYC-New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater
Workshop) Artist-In-Residence.
ON THE PAGE
Kelly has self-published three chapbooks: Inside Outside Outside
Inside (2004), Thought Crimes (2005), and No Sugar Please (2008). Her
poetry and essays have been widely published in literary journals and
magazines like Drunken Boat, Pedestal, Hawai’i Women’s Journal, Montage,
Monsoon, Tea Party, The F-Word, The Indypendent, Wicked Alice, AWOL
Magazine, Shades Magazine, Versal Amsterdam, The Kartika Review, Words.
Beats. Life. The Journal Of Global Hip Hop Culture, Asian American
Literary Review, and New York Theater Review.
Anthologies that have featured Kelly’s poetry and essays include Just
Like A Girl: A Manifesta (Girlchild Press, 2008), We Got Issues!: A
Young Woman’s Guide to A Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life (Inner
Ocean Publishing, 2006), We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the
Next Generation of Feminists (Seal Press/Avalon, 2006), His Rib
(Penmanship Books, 2007), and The Spoken Word Revolution Redux
(Sourcebooks, Inc. 2007). She is currently at work on her first
full-length collection of poems under the working title
A Guidebook for Huaqiao.
ON THE SCREEN
Kelly’s first spoken word video, “By-Standing: The Beginning of An
American Lifetime” (Dir. Karen Lin, 2007), was a ground-breaking
integration of spoken word and in-camera style of music videos. It was
an official selection of dozens of film festivals across North America
and won both the 2007 Media that Matters War & Peace Award and the
11th Annual Urbanworld VIBE Honorable Mention for Narrative Short.
“By-Standing…” was also broadcast on PBS’ “Reel New York” and
ImaginAsian TV’s “Short Cuts. Youth Noise commissioned her second
spoken word video “Weapons of Mass Creation” (Dir. Kamilah Forbes, 2007)
for their nationwide Summit Tour for grassroots youth activists.
In 2008, Kelly’s PSA on APIA voting rights directed by Karen Lin was a
San Diego Asian Film Festival Reel in the Vote PSA Contest finalist.
Her production company, Moving Earth Productions, also launched its
first independently produced spoken word video “Black, White, Whatever…”
(Dir. Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, 2008), which was featured on the homepage of
Youtube for 24 hours on November 3rd, 2008, the day before Barack
Obama’s historic election. The video garnered over 200,000 hits online
shortly after its viral release, coverage by the nation’s top bloggers,
and a feature on NPR’s “The Brian Lehrer Show.”
ON SOCIAL CHANGE
Kelly’s formative experiences as a community organizer, domestic
violence counselor, oral historian, and youth worker deeply inform her
commitment to the arts and entertainment as a means to forge the
foundations for social justice, non-violence and the uplift of
underrepresented people, ideas, and movements. She holds a double B.A.
with high honors in Urban Planning and Comparative Literature from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She was awarded the
2010 Outstanding Asian American Alumni Award from the Asian American
Cultural Center at UIUC, following in the footsteps of author/journalist
Iris Chang and filmmaker Ang Lee. She is also a proud alum of Michelle
Obama’s Public Allies and worked previously with the Posse Foundation
Inc., founded by MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Debbie Bial.
Kelly has facilitated workshops in high schools, colleges, domestic
violence and rape crisis centers, and juvenile detention centers across
the U.S. and Europe. She has also brought her unique approach to spoken
word to her workshops at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya and
the Centro de Las Lenguas in Chiapas, Mexico. She gave keynote
performances at the 2008 College Democrats National Convention and the
2009 & 2011 Campus Progress National Conference, sharing the bill
with Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Van Jones, Amy Goodman, Kalpen Modi,
and John Oliver from “The Daily Show.” She has hosted youth events like
Youth Speaks’ Brave New Voices (Inter)national Poetry Festival, Young
Chicago Author’s Louder Than A Bomb, and Urban Word NYC’s Citywide
Slam. Kelly also hosted the National Poetry Slam’s Asian American
Showcase and organized with Women Outloud, the Asian American Artists
Collective Chicago, Young Asians with Power!, and the National Asian
Pacific Islander American Spoken Word Summit.
her youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/kztsai
