About
ky li interprets the uncommon in a common way. Currently living in Louisville, Kentucky, he creatively brings his years of performance experience and travel to his writing. His folk poetry intrigues the imagination and finds beauty that has been overlooked in the past. His historical fiction tells the story you thought you knew in a new way. ky’s goal as a writer is to show you a new way to look at the world you thought you understood.
Short-term goals include the release of his first book of folk poetry “Appoggiatura” later this fall. Appoggiatura is a musical term that translates from Italian as leaning tone. "My poetry took a huge skip forward in my priorities after seeing the movie “Before Night Falls” which tells the story of exiled Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. Since that time my poetry has progressed step by step, leaning into the essential Truth of the universe."
Long-term goals are finishing the two historical mysteries he is currently working on, publishing his second book of poetry “Signs of Life”, and starting his memoir while walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago in 2018. The Waxwing's Song is ky's first historical mystery set in Michigan's upper peninsula in 1868 that tells the story of an eccentric lighthouse keeper who finds a mysterious figure washed ashore after a storm. The second mystery, Tracks, unfolds through the untold story of the Kentucky Derby's black jockeys who inagurated what is now known as Churchill Downs.
While most people ky’s age are planning for retirement, he is preparing for his next great adventure. ky says, “At age 56, I decided it was time to finish the undergraduate degree I had started in the mid-70s. That degree was in music, this degree is in Creative Writing/Poetry. I will finish my Master’s Degree in poetry in one more year, complete another year of language immersion in Spanish, and then walk the El Camino trail in Spain for my 60th birthday. Oh, las historias que le dirán/Oh, the stories I will tell.”