About

S. Isabel Choi is a 2024 NEA Creative Writing Fellow based in the Bay Area. Recognized as a Best American Essays Notable Mention and nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Slice, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Sweet Lit, and The Rumpus. Formerly an attorney, she is finishing a memoir on the legacy of loss and illness, inspired by the story of her grandfather, 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 the 2024 New Letters Conger Beasley Jr. Award, long-listed for the 2020 The de Groot Foundation's First Pages Prize​, ​and selected as a finalist for ​the 2020 Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction​.

A 2025 Periplus Fellow and Bread Loaf Writers’ 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.