Kay Kroger

Contributor

Contributor

Kay is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher from Chicago with a Master’s degree in linguistics. She first became interested in language when she stumbled upon bilingual editions of Pablo Neruda’s and Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry. She became interested in indigenous languages and language revitalization through the poetry of Ofelia Zepeda (Tohono O’odham) and the works of Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo). Kay found out about Where Are Your Keys? in 2014 when some furious googling about language revitalization internships landed her on the advert for their summer intensive at Tsleil-Waututh. She remained in contact with WAYK over the next few years until 2017, when she got the chance to be a volunteer assistant at series of two weekend introductory workshops. Kay traces her ancestry to County Sligo in Ireland; she is also a member of the Stewart clan of Scotland. Her partner is Filipino. Her goal is to get fluent in Tagalog; once she has achieved that, her goal is to become fluent in Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic (which are mutually unintelligible) and to become actively involved in those languages’ revitalization efforts.