About

Born in Bucheon, South Korea and raised in the Midwest, Katie Hae Leo’s creative work explores the multiple intersections of the adopted body with received notions of race, ethnicity, gender, (dis)ability, and popular culture.

Katie’s writing has appeared in such journals as Asian American Literary Review, Water~Stone Review, Kartika Review, Midway Journal, Asian American Poetry & Writing, Line Break, Mascara Literary Review, and Utne Reader, as well as anthologies The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow Press), Flip the Script (The An-ya Project), and The Field Guide to Poetic Playwriting (Red Metal Press).  Her chapbook Attempts at Location was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Award and is available through Finishing Line Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Minnesota.

Her produced plays include Four Destinies (Mu Performing Arts), Bride/price (with MaMa mOsAiC), and Hmonglish Musical (Center for Hmong Arts & Talent’s YLG), as well as adaptations of the children’s books When You Trap a Tiger, A Single Shard and Baseball Saved Us (Stages Theatre Company/Mu Performing Arts).  Her solo performance piece N/A, developed with Zaraawar Mistry, premiered at Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia and was remounted at Dreamland Arts in Saint Paul, as part of The Origin(s) Project.

Katie Hae Leo is creating an original and beautiful new American voice, one that penetrates far below the surfaces of our realities and histories.”
-David Mura, Author of
Turning Japanese and Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire

She has received The Academy of American Poets’ James Wright Prize, The Minnesota Emerging Writer Award, a Gesell Award for nonfiction, the Spark Leadership Grant from Coalition for Asian American Leaders (CAAL), and two Pushcart Prize nominations, as well as funding from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), and Southeast Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC).  She has been a two-time participant in The Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, once for poetry (mentors: Elizabeth Alexander, G.E. Patterson) and once for nonfiction (mentors: Toi Derricotte, Patricia Weaver Francisco), as well as a two-time participant in The Playwrights’ Center’s Many Voices Program.

Katie was a longtime actor in the Twin Cities and worked with companies like Theater Mu, MaMa mOsAiC Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Pangea World Theater, Red Eye, Outward Spiral, and The History Theater.  She has also worked as a nonprofit fundraising and organizational consultant for numerous groups, including Asian Pacific Community in Action (APCA), the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), OCA-Greater Phoenix Chapter, Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, Loop It Up, Transformation Table, The 2011 National APIA Spoken Word & Poetry Summit, and the Twin Cities leg of Still Present Pasts, a national touring exhibit centered around the Korean War.

Katie currently works as a Development Officer for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a food and nutrition consumer advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.