Photo: Jack Sorokin

SHORT BIO |

HYESEUNG SONG is a first-generation Korean American painter and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl. Docile has been called a "savagely beautiful memoir" by David Henry Hwang, a "revelation" by Chloé Cooper Jones and was named a "Best Book" by Apple and “Most Anticipated” by Electric Literature, BookRiot and more. Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy at Princeton and Harvard Universities, and painting at the Grand Central Atelier in New York City. A two-time Greenshields award winner, TedX speaker, and resident artist of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Vermont Studio Center and the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program, Song has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is at work on her first novel. Song lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York.

LONG BIO |

HYESEUNG SONG is the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl. She is an American representational painter best known for large-scale figurative oil paintings and prints whose visual idioms toggle between resolution and fragmentation. Her work explores creativity, psychological incipience, and the life of the artist.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Song grew up in Texas and studied philosophy at Princeton and Harvard Universities. In her mid-twenties, she returned to her childhood passion of art, leaving academia to pursue painting at the Water Street Atelier, now the Grand Central Atelier, in New York City. After completing her studies, she was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant (twice) and began to exhibit in New York.

Song is a devoted teacher and has instructed at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the Queens Council on the Arts’ High School 2 Art School Program as well as the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, during which time she was named among Baltimore Magazine’s “40 Under 40” for her work creating synergies between the science and art communities in that city. She often addresses high school and college audiences, and was a featured speaker at Princeton University’s TedX Conference as well as at the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton’s Leadership Conference.

She has received residencies at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists in Brittany, France, Penland School of Arts and Craft, the Vermont Studio Center as well as others, and her work resides in private collections internationally.

Song lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York.