Sun Yung Shin
Acclaimed Poet, Writer & Cultural Worker
2016 Minnesota Book Award
Readings &
Lecture Topics
- An Evening with Sun Yung Shin
Biography
“In poems traversing that canny valley between verse and prose, Shin draws on cinema, technology, mythology, sci fi, autobiography and folklore to unlock the titular emotion: the unbearableness of the labyrinth, the splendor of being a machine—a hybrid, a replicant, an orphan.” —The Rumpus
“These constant reminders of surreal wonderment do their work like little ice picks, chipping away at the grand event of colonized hurt. The results are small, perceptible feelings you could almost hold in your hand.” —Waxwing
“Shin’s poetry is as cerebral as it is beautiful, exploring the personal experiences of race, immigration, and gender alongside academic investigations of religion and science, philosophy and art.” —Bustle
Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is a poet, writer, and cultural worker. Shin is the author of the poetry collections The Wet Hex (Coffee House Press, 2022); Unbearable Splendor (Coffee House Press, 2016), winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry and finalist for the 2017 PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry; Rough, and Savage (Coffee House Press, 2012); and Skirt Full of Black (Coffee House Press, 2007), winner of the 2007 Asian American Literary Award for poetry.
“Being an Asian American, or any person of color in the U.S., generally means being invisible and hypervisible. Those that are invisible are more easily shifted into the category of disposable. Those that are hypervisible are more easily shifted or are already in the category of Other, outlaw, criminal, invader, parasite, etc. Anything poets and artists can do to make the status quo strange–in this case to attempt to expose human cultures of structural dominance–as constructed may help reveal how violence is often born and propagated on the seemingly “neutral” or “disembodied” premises of language,” says Shin.
Personal and environmental violations form the backdrop against which Shin examines questions of grievability, violence, and responsibility in her most recent collection of poems, The Wet Hex. Smashing the hierarchies of god and humanity, heaven and hell, in favor of indigenous Korean shamanism and animism, Shin layers an apocalyptic revision of nineteenth-century imagery of the sublime over the present, conjuring a reality at once beautiful and terrible. Of the collection, Michael Kleber-Diggs said, “The Wet Hex is a worthy monument to this Holocene Epoch. Using images, allusions, and truths that are mystical, metaphorical, empirical, and personal, Sun Yung Shin prevails here as a daughter, and as a mother; these poems transcend our earthly realm like shadow children. Shin is a writer of profound skill and authentic presence. The Wet Hex is canorous, masterful, and utterly unique. It builds on her stellar body of work to advance what’s possible in poetry and art.”
Shin is the editor of What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021) and of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota and co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. She is also the author of bilingual illustrated book for children Cooper’s Lesson.
She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum with poet Su Hwang.
Short Bio
Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is a poet, writer, and cultural worker. Shin is the author of the poetry collections The Wet Hex (2022); Unbearable Splendor (finalist for the 2017 PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry, winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry); Rough, and Savage; and Skirt Full of Black (winner of the 2007 Asian American Literary Award for poetry). She is co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, and author of bilingual illustrated book for children Cooper’s Lesson. She is the editor of What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021) and of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum with poet Su Hwang.
Videos
Publications
The Wet Hex
Poetry, 2022
Personal and environmental violations form the backdrop against which Sun Yung Shin examines questions of grievability, violence, and responsibility in The Wet Hex. Incorporating sources such as her own archival immigration documents, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Christopher Columbus’s journals, and traditional Korean burial rituals, Shin explores the ways that lives are weighed and bartered. Smashing the hierarchies of god and humanity, heaven and hell, in favor of indigenous Korean shamanism and animism, The Wet Hex layers an apocalyptic revision of nineteenth-century imagery of the sublime over the present, conjuring a reality at once beautiful and terrible.
Unbearable Splendor
Poetry, 2016
Poetry as essay, as a way of hovering over the uncanny, sci-fi orientalism, Antigone, cyborgs, Borges, disobedience. Sun Yung Shin moves ideas around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be guest, to be host. How to be at home.
Rough, and Savage
Poetry, 2012
These poems animate the elements of the epic poem and Korean history across a dystopian dreamscape of fairytale and folklore. Filled with pithy observations and striking lyrics, this collection explores alienation, moral isolation, and nationhood. Rough, and Savage is a lyrical collage of ancient fragments, fairytale, and both Korean and American history that is as daring as it is restlessly imaginative.
Skirt Full of Black
Poetry, 2007
“Shin’s poetry is a grand orchestration of the cacophonic events and voices in an immigrant woman’s life. Marked by a keen political consciousness, an imagination as wicked as it is generous, and an erotic, physical sense of language both remembered and forgotten, these poems are at once social critique and personal intimation, worth revisiting again and again.” —Jane Jeong Trenka
In her debut collection, Sun Yung Shin employs the techniques of investigative poetry and collage to craft a nuanced, unique language for navigating the politics of gender, ethnicity, and identity. As she spins new myths from Christian and Buddhist traditions and bestows new connotations upon the characters of the Korean alphabet, she gives voice to the spiritual and cultural hunger of those caught between two worlds.
Articles & Audio
Read What’s In Print
• Review: The Wet Hex – The Poetry Question
• Sun Yung Shin: In Conversation With Vi Khi Nao – American Microreviews & Interviews
• What We Hunger For: Refugee & Immigrant Stories about Food & Family – Apogee Journal
• Unmapped Realms: Sun Yung Shin’s Unbearable Splendor –LA Review of Books
• Unbearable Splendor Is a Literary White Dwarf Star – Chicago Review of Books
• 5 Minutes With…Sun Yung Shin – Winter Tangerine
Listen to Audio
• In the Cut: Being Asian American During This Pandemic – PBS
• Interview with Poet Sun Yung Shin – KFAI’s MinneCulture
• What society gets wrong about transracial adoption – University of Minnesota Press
Selected Writings
• Read “Being Asian American During This Pandemic: A Word Find Puzzle” – Pollen
• Read “A History of Domestication” – Academy of American Poets
Abecedarian: On Purchasing and Receiving Genetic Information from Two Commercial DNA Companies