About

S. Isabel Choi is ​a Korean American writer based in the Bay Area. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Periplus Collectiv​e. Her writing has been ​recognized as a Best American Essays Notable Mention​, and nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net​. Formerly an attorney, she is finishing​ Let the River Run, a memoir on the legacy of loss and illness, inspired by the story of her grandfather, Yoo Tae-heung, the Chief Justice​ of South Korea’s Supreme Court from 1981 to 1986. He crossed one river in North Korea to escape a death march during the Korean War and decades​ later, leapt into another river in Seoul to take his own life. Excerpts​ from this project ​were ​selected as a finalist for ​a New Letters Conger Beasley Jr. Award, long-listed for the The de Groot Foundation's First Pages Prize​, ​and selected as a finalist for ​the​ Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction​.

She is an editor for Seventh Wave and a founder of Radical Ahjumma, a Korean feminist writer collective. A ​Bread Loaf Conference alum, Isabel earned her BA from Dartmouth College, JD from Santa Clara University, and MFA from the University of San Francisco. She is represented by CAA.