Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai
Spoken Word Artist

"Experience one of her performances and you will understand that fierce artists do not need to scream to be heard... that the world matters too much to let things just slip by..." Anida Esguerra.

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chinese/Taiwanese American spoken word artist, playwright, essayist, and choreographer who strengthens cultural pride and survival through how she spits and how she lives. Splitting her time between Brooklyn and Chicago, Kelly has rocked over 170 venues across the country including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the House of Blues, the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and two seasons of "Russell Simmons Presents HBO Def Poetry."

Kelly got an early taste of the Chicago poetry slam scene as a high school student and went on to flex her skills as a founding member of Sirenz (a women of color spoken word crew that wove together stories of the Asian, Black, and Latina diasporas). Her formative experiences as a community organizer, domestic violence counselor, oral historian, and youth worker ground her commitment to social justice, non-violence, and the uplift of youth voices through the arts.

She has been involved in numerous arts organizing efforts including Women Outloud, the Asian American Artists Collective Chicago, Young Asians with Power (YAWP), No Thanks!giving, and the 2nd National Asian Pacific Islander American Spoken Word Summit. She has also hosted the National Poetry Slam Asian American Showcase, Chicago's Louder Than A Bomb Teen Poetry Festival, and Brave New Voices National Teen Poetry Slam.

Collaborations include work with multimedia theater ensembles, Mango Tribe and We Got Issues!, and dance companies: Urban Bush Women, Inspirit, VT Dance, and Ase Dance Collective. The Illinois Arts Council awarded her the Governor's International Exchange Award to attend the 6th Women Playwrights International Conference in Manila, Philippines in 2003. Kelly was also one of the youngest poets featured at the International Conference on Chinese Poetry. She is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Inside Outside Outside Inside (2004) and Thought Crimes (2005).

Publications and forthcoming publications include Montage, Monsoon, Asian American Resource Workshop Newsletter, YAWP Summer Reader 2006, Tea Party, The Indypendent, Wicked Alice, We Got Issues!: A Young Woman's Guide to A Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life (Inner Ocean Publishing), and WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER WAVE: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists (Seal Press/Avalon). She has been awarded residencies and scholarships by the Kundiman Asian American Emerging Poets Retreat, Voices Writers of Color Workshop, Asian Arts Initiative, Norcroft Retreat for Women Writers, and Unit One/Allen Hall. She was also a juror for the Her Mark 2007 poetry competition.

In addition to her solo touring schedule, she toured for five years as a founding collective member of Mango Tribe and contributed work as a writer, performer, choreographer, and/or director for all three of Mango Tribe's mainstage productions "Sisters in the Smoke" (2002), "The Creation Mythology Project" (2004), and "Un/Knowing: Desire & Empire" (2006). She is also an original cast member of We Got Issues! civic transformation and performance project and continues to perform and organize as a part of its current national tour.

When chillin' at home in Brooklyn, she's feverishly hammering in the nails of her own production company, Moving Earth Productions, and banging out its debut show "Murder the Machine," which was excerpted at Chicago's first Hip Hop Theater Festival in 2006. She is also putting her brains, energy, and heart towards crafting an interactive audience multimedia performance, "The Grieving Room."

http://www.yellowgurl.com/