2: Poet LI-YOUNG LEE. He's written two volumes of poetry, Rose, (Boa Editions), and The City in Which I Love You, (Boa Editions). LEE's won many awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He's just completed a memoir about his family's refugee experience in America, The Winged Seed (Simon & Schuster). LEE was born in Indonesia. His parents were from China, where his father had been private physician to Mao. LEE's father became a political prisoner in Indonesia, and escaped. After traveling through Southeast Asia, the family ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where his father headed an all-white Presbyterian church. LEE was six years old then. One reviewer writes of the memoir, "a powerful attempt to conquer the past and--with compassion--to sign a truce with it."

Copyright 1995 Fresh Air