Brynn Saito (she/her) is a poet, organizer, and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
and English at California State University, Fresno. She is the author of two books
of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for
the Northern California Book Award. Her third book will be published in late 2023.
Brynn is a two-time recipient of the California State Library’s Civil Liberties Public
Education grant for her work with Yonsei Memory Project (YMP). Co-founded with farmer
and artist, Nikiko Masumoto, YMP awakens the archives of Japanese American history
through arts-based, intergenerational, and intercultural public programming. In 2019,
Brynn and Nikiko were featured in Vogue magazine for their work with YMP.
Brynn has also received grant support from Densho, Hedgebrook, and Santa Fe Art Institute’s
“Truth and Reconciliation” program. Besides her two full-length collections, Brynn
curated an online project/chapbook entitled Dear—, and she co-authored with Traci Brimhall the poetry chapbooks Bright Power, Dark Peace (Diode Editions, 2016) and Wild Recovery published in Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic (Tupelo Press, 2020).
Her poems have been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed. They've also appeared
in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the American Poetry Review. Her work was recently featured in the opening ceremony for The People’s Inauguration,
a 10-day event inspiring collective action led by activist Valarie Kaur.
Brynn is a fourth generation Japanese American and Korean American from Fresno, California.
She has taught in Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab for emerging
writers of color and has been a visiting writer in the MFA programs at University
of San Francisco, Sierra Nevada College, Saint Mary’s College of California, and California
Institute of Integral Studies.
More at: https://brynnsaito.com/
