Five Questions: Woogee Bae, SAL’s Donor Relations Associate
October 30, 2019
Meet Woogee Bae! Formerly a poetry student at UW Bothell and SUNY Buffalo, Woogee is SAL’s brand new Donor Relations Associate. To introduce her to the SAL community, we asked Woogee five questions, so read on for all the intel about her new role on SAL’s development team, her hobbies – including two of our favorites, writing and eating – plus, which writers would get an invite to one of her special dinner parties . . .
Tell us a little about your career, pre-SAL. What have you been up to?
I’ve been a student for so long! This past June, I completed an MFA in poetry at UW Bothell, and before that I was working on another master’s degree at SUNY Buffalo, on the more scholarly side of poetry. While at Bothell, I interned with the poetry press Wave Books, proofing tons of manuscripts and helping out with their marketing efforts wherever I could. I also started an ecopoetics journal with two of my friends (we published our first issue in September), and helped organize the &Now Festival, an innovative literary conference that happens at different universities every two years. This year, it passed through Bothell. 🙂
What’s your new role with us? What about it is most exciting to you?
I am the Donor Relations Associate, and I’m very excited to bring together my love of community-building and data management (not a joke!). I love that I can dive deep into all the details, not only in making sure we’re organized and up-to-date on all information, but also in paying special attention to our supporters and sharing our appreciation for everyone who makes SAL what it is and can be. I enjoy being able to zoom in and out to create those meaningful connections with our community.
What are some of your favorite things to do outside of work? Can you tell us about your writing?
I love anything food-related—strolling through the Capitol Hill Farmer’s Market on Sundays, hosting small dinner parties in my studio apartment, spending an entire day visiting five different restaurants, assembling cheese boards, snacking in bed. A lot of my writing is also based around food in some way: its historical and cultural significances, the extremes of hunger and waste, and the kind of care and affection that seems inarticulable but that can be communicated through gestures of feeding and eating.
What are you reading right now? What’s on your nightstand?
Right now, I am reading Civil Bound by Myung Mi Kim. It’s her first book of poetry in ten years! Also on my nightstand is Mary Ruefle’s Dunce (super excited for her SAL visit!), Dao Strom’s You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (a beautiful hybrid text written in both Vietnamese and English), and some dying flowers.
If you had to invite 3 writers (dead or alive) to a dinner party, who would they be?
I appreciate this question so much because I love dinner parties. And my answer is that I would invite three mentors who are also incredible poets—Myung Mi Kim, Sarah Dowling, and Amaranth Borsuk—who’ve shaped so much of my writing, helped push the boundaries of what language could do, and really encouraged the importance of community (even beyond poetry). I think a small, intimate dinner with writers I greatly appreciate and admire on a personal level would make the perfect dinner party.
Thank you, Woogee!