Nancy Lynée Woo

Nancy Lynée Woo has lived and worked in Long Beach since 2011 when she moved here after completing her college degree from UC Santa Cruz. Immediately, she fell in love with the quirky, progressive atmosphere of Long Beach and all the weird, wonderful people here. In that time, she’s published one full-length poetry book, two chapbooks, and one poetry CD. She’s been awarded a handful of fellowships, including the Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. She’s had her hands in lots of different exciting projects, including California Creative Corps and Artists at Work, and collaborated with many incredible folks. Nancy is also a passionate and experienced teaching artist who has created innovative poetry and writing lessons for people from age 5 to 95. She’s performed her poetry in many places, from a barber shop to the Hammer Museum. Some of the topics she is most passionate about include climate justice, nature, feminism, motherhood, spirituality, and mixed-race families. For a more extended bio, please visit her website at https://www.nancylyneewoo.com/about and follow on Instagram/Facebook @fancifulnance.

ARTIST STATEMENT
According to poet Robert Carr, “poets repeat the same prayer in different words.” My prayer is: I wish to empower grace. I write to see what I can’t see yet, to experience perspectives beyond my own and stretch my understandings of the world. I am constantly working to explore the concept of magic in modern life. I tend to believe that magic operates from a core of wonder and gratitude, present in everything from the mundane miracle of grocery stores, to the approach of a butterfly on a calm spring day, to the vast expanse of galaxies and universes. I am fascinated by the tension between: science and mysticism, body and spirit, masculine and feminine, modern technology and ancient mythologies, mortality and collective consciousness. As a poet, I wish for my poems to be gifts to the reader, so a driving question is, “Who do I have to be to write the poems I want to write?”