Willyce Kim
Willyce Kim (born 1946) is an American writer. She is generally recognized to be the first openly-lesbian, Asian American poet to be published in the United States. Kim published her first book of poetry in 1971 and continued to publish poetry and novels throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She also contributed to a number of lesbian literary reviews throughout this time period. Her work is characterized by its celebration of lesbianism, strong women, and queer kinship. Background and education. Kim, who has lived in Oakland, California, since the early 1970s, was born in 1946 in Honolulu, Hawaii , to Korean American parents. Raised Catholic, Kim attended Catholic schools, graduating with a degree in English literature in 1968 from San Francisco College of Women (later becoming Lone Mountain College, which, in turn, was eventually acquired by the University of San Francisco). While at San Francisco College of Women, Kim served as editor of Tradewinds, the campus literary magazine. Career. Kim was an early member of the Women's Press Collective, an Oakland-based collective that facilitated the printing and distribution of self-published books by lesbians. Kim's later works were published by Alyson Publications, a Boston-based publisher  specializing in LGBT literature. Kim's work also appeared in literary journals such as Women's Press, Everywoman, Furies, Plexus, Sinister Wisdom, Conditions Ten, IKON, and Phoenix Rising. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Kim participated in readings and open mics along with other Bay Area poets including Pat Parker and Kitty Tsui. Among the venues where Kim read were A Woman's Place bookstore in Oakland, Scott's, a lesbian biker bar in San Francisco's Castro district, Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco, Kim's work has influenced writers such as Alexander Chee and Merle Woo and  has been reviewed both in the LGBTQ press and the mainstream press. In 1985, Kim began working in the library at UC Berkeley where she served in a variety of supervisory positions in Doe Library for 25 years. Bibliography. Cade, Cathy, The Lives of Seven Lesbian Feminists, Oakland, CA: Waterwoman Books, 1987. Juan, Karin Aguilar-San. "Landmarks in literature by Asian American lesbians." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18, no. 4 (1993): 936–943. Kim, Elaine H. "'These Bearers of a Homeland': An Overview of Korean American Literature, 1934–2001." Korea Journal 41, no. 3 (2001): 149–200. Kyung, Min  Eun, "To American and Beyond: Diaspora in Korean American Writing," Korean Literature Now, 25 (Autumn 2014). Van Ausdall, Mimi Iimuro. "'The Day All of the Different Parts of Me Can Come Along': Intersectionality and US Third World Feminism in the Poetry of Pat Parker and Willyce Kim." Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no. 3 (2015): 336–356. 우효경. "Korean American Queer Poetics in Willyce Kim’s Eating Artichokes." 현대영미시연구 24, no. 1 (2018): 183–211.