The Shore Interview #21: Nancy Lynée Woo
Interviewed by Taylor N. Schaefer
FROM: The Shore
TNS: In your poem “S.O.S With Warble and Cell Tower,” you utilize large shifts in tone and rhetorical position— from call for help to call to action— from dream imagery to concrete reality. How did you come to these craft choices in the poem?
Continue reading “The Shore Interview #21: Nancy Lynée Woo”

During this time of social distancing, many writers in the L.Á. literary community are holding virtual events from workshops to open mics to readings and book clubs in an effort to keep us all connected to each other and our humansess. Below is one such event, hosted by Long Beach poet Nancy Lynée Woo.
If you haven’t caught it yet, there’s a storytelling wave barreling through our city, one that’s been surging and swelling for more than a decade. Though I’m a poet and tend to be too distracted by shiny metaphors to bother with linear narrative, the storytelling scene in Long Beach is definitely worth caring about.
A lot goes on in literary Long Beach. Open mics, readings and even a new book store, Page Against the Machine, opened on East 3rd Street earlier this year. One of the biggest movers and shakers in the community is poet/arts organizer/promoter Nancy Lynée Woo. She’s always devising and running new literary events. The following is her latest event, in collaboration with Elmast Kozloyan, in her own words, taken from her Facebook post:
Nancy Lynee Woo is a freelance writer, editor, and creative consultant, and organizer of creative events including community writing workshops and poetry series. She is also an incorrigible optimist and is not shy about admitting it and for good reason. (Her middle name is actually “Lynée” but WordPress won’t let me use it in SEO. My apologies.)
The Friday night crowd clapped, hooted and snapped their fingers for each poet who stood up to read their work at Fox Coffee House. The poets read from their phones, mostly, expressing loss, frustration with societal expectations and anger at injustice.
A lot has happened in Los Ángeles Literature in May. Writers were running workshops for the community and they all came together on the 19th and 20th in Pasadena’s Theater District for the 7th Annual LitFest Pasadena, celebrating local writers and presses. Plus, as many L.A. writers teach at local high schools, community colleges and universities and as the school year ends, they’ve been reflecting on the impact they’ve had on their students. One has been recognized for his teaching with an award.