Edward Pokropski

Edward Pokropski is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer, producer, and comedian based in New York City, where he works at NBC and serves as an executive of Asian Comedy Fest. An avid storyteller, Ed shares that he was born in Seoul, South Korea “as far as he knows,” a caveat he uses to bring non-adoptees into the fold of his personal experiences as a transracial Korean adoptee. When he was 19 months old, Ed was adopted by a Polish-American family which, at the time, was living in California. He invokes his caveat once more when telling us of his first meal in his parents’ home—a banana with a bowl of rice—a memory which he keeps alive by eating bananas and rice in some form every year on his adoption day.

He credits his mother for trying to create safety for their family, and his younger brother, who was also adopted from Korea, for getting him to begin exploring parts of his identity as a Korean American transracial adoptee. Safety, as Ed describes, was the feeling of being accepted as your “whole self,” which he learned to articulate and express through storytelling for both adoptee and non-adoptee audiences. Whenever he takes to the stage (as with his solo show, “Case 84: Adopted in the U.S.A.”), he wants mixed audiences to be able to locate moments of resonance, understanding, and humor in stories about adoptee experiences, challenging those who might feel as though they have no connection to adoption to find within different stories glimpses of the familiar. Ultimately, Ed hopes that his shows feel like an embrace to his community.