Photo: Jack Sorokin

HYESEUNG SONG is a first-generation Korean American painter, writer and teacher. She is the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl (Simon & Schuster), called a “savagely beautiful memoir” by David Henry Hwang and a “revelation” by Chloé Cooper Jones. Docile was a“Most Anticipated” by Electric Literature, BookRiot, and more, and the audiobook was a “Best” at Apple and BookRiot. A Korean language edition was released in 2025.

Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy at Princeton and painting at the Grand Central Atelier. She is a Harvard Law School and Harvard Grad School drop-out (read the book!). A two-time Greenshields award winner, TedX speaker, and resident artist of The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Vermont Studio Center and the Klots International Program for Artists, Song has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Queens Council on the Arts. Her paintings, described as “evocative” and “alluring,” have been the subject of solo and group shows, and her work is held in private collections internationally.

Song is currently at work on a memoir about the death of her parents. She lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York. 

(For art CV, please see here.)