Some poets write about exile. Li-Young Lee has lived it.

Born in Jakarta to Chinese parents, raised on stories of political imprisonment and midnight escapes, shaped by a five-year odyssey across continents before finding home in America, Lee transforms the weight of displacement into luminous verse that has captivated readers worldwide.

This literary giant is bringing his voice to East Tennessee State University.  

On September 24, Lee will come to ETSU’s campus as part of the Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative.  

He will participate in an afternoon conversation with ETSU Poet-in-Residence Dr. Jesse Graves at 1:30 p.m. in the D.P. Culp Student Center East Tennessee Room. At 7 p.m. in the Bud Frank Theatre, Lee will hold an evening reading.

Both events are free and open to the public.  

It's exactly the kind of creative energy ETSU brings to Appalachia – world-class artists sharing their craft in the heart of the mountains.

“Li-Young Lee is one of America’s most beloved poets, truly a national treasure. He is a poet of love, family and spiritual seeking, always attuned to the heart’s music. His poems are reprinted in all the major American Literature anthologies and are studied at every level from early high school up through graduate student theses and dissertations,” said Graves. “We are thrilled to bring him to ETSU as our Fall Feature guest for the Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative. I feel that hosting such a great poet as Li-Young Lee, and inviting our students and community to share time with him, helps keep alive the vision Dr. Bach had for our campus.” 

Lee’s journey is remarkable.  

His great-grandfather served as China’s first republican president. His father, a devout Christian, was a physician to Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung. After China’s political upheaval in 1949, Lee’s parents fled to Indonesia, where anti-Chinese sentiment would eventually force another desperate escape in 1959 – this time with Lee’s father fresh from a year in President Sukarno's political prisons.

The family spent five years crossing Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan before settling in the United States in 1964, when Lee was seven years old.

Li-Young Lee has published 6 books of poetry, including “Rose” and “The Invention of the Darling, The Winged Seed: A Memoir,” and a recent translation of the “Dao De Jing,” the classic text of Daoist wisdom and teachings.  

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