Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

is a multidisciplinary artist and software developer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has lived in nine states and two continents. Art is a way for her to traverse seen and unseen geographies.

Her first poetry collection is ravel, a finalist for the Many Voices Project by New Rivers Press, and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her work in poetry and fiction has garnered a number of Pushcart nominations.

Her poetry has appeared in journals such as The California Quarterly, The Columbia Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Pedestal, and Spillway.

Bonnie's first play Liriope
is a theatrical retelling of the Narcissus myth with movement and music. In an era where water conditions are extreme, and melting arctic ice has released a silencing disease into the air, the healer Liriope has to choose between her work containing the silencing disease and parenting her son Narcissus, a talented but self-absorbed performer. Water is a character played by a dancer, and is at once parent, friend, lover, and murderer.

The work-in-progress staging of Liriope
at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve May 30 & 31 is a culmination of Bonnie s artist's residency at the university. There will be music led by Chris Chafe, and movement by Ronja Ver, Katarina Ericsson, et al.