THE WAY OF RAY

Dr. Ray Hsu is co-founder of the Art Song Lab, an interdisciplinary platform that partners 24 writers and composers to create fusions in the genre of art song alongside performers. These new works are workshopped and premiered at the Vancouver International Song Institute’s SONGFIRE Festival in partnership with the Canadian Music Centre.

While completing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he taught for two years in a US prison, where he founded the Prison Writing Workshop. The Workshop brings campus-based writers to the prison to write alongside incarcerated writers in a writers’ studio environment and mentors incarcerated writers writing towards their High-School Equivalency Diplomas.

Dr. Hsu is the author of two award-winning books and writing in over fifty publications internationally. His work has been set to music and adapted for film; and he has been artist in residence at the Gibraltar Point International Artist Residency Program.

In addition to teaching and consulting, he has been interviewed for television, radio, and print media as UBC Expert in youth trends, popular culture, and diversity. He sits on several nonprofit arts boards at the city, national, and international levels.