Sun Yung Shin, author of The Wet Hex
Poetry Category, sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.
Each week leading up to the 35th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
Would you tell us one or two things about your finalist book that you are particularly proud of, and why?
I am really grateful for my collaboration with the Korean Canadian visual artist Jinny Yu, grateful that she trusted me as a partner with her work. We have never met in person, or even Zoomed, and did this all via Google docs and email and just had a strong connection over the motif of doors, portals, and passages. I would write a poem and she would then create a drawing, and we went on that way, over a fairly short period of time, with little to no discussion. It felt very direct and even spiritual.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer with an interest in your category?
My advice is to be artistically bold, community-minded, and to not take our freedom of speech and press for granted.
Tell us about a favorite book. Why did you find it moving, influential, or otherwise memorable?
A favorite book is Under Flag by American poet Myung Mi Kim. Like me she is a Korean immigrant and her work was the first to help me find my idiom, especially around disruptions and deformations of language as it pertains to the state, citizenship, belonging, militarism.
Tell us something about yourself that is not widely known.
Well, I’d like to share that I started a pandemic hobby that I’ve turned into a side hustle. I make jewelry, often with cosmic or mythic motifs under the name Tyger Tyger Studio, and in general I enjoy things like sewing, embroidery, knitting, and crocheting.
The Minnesota Book Awards is a celebration of writers, readers – and libraries. We’d love if you would share thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
Libraries are incredibly important to me! I grew up in a family where my parents didn’t read books for pleasure. But they supported my reading, especially my mother, who brought me to the public library every week when I was young, and libraries, including my school library, were palaces of seemingly limitless mystery and adventure. Libraries opened the world to me in my small corner of suburban Chicago.
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean American poet, fiction writer, nonfiction writer, editor, and educator. Her books include four collections of poetry. Her poetry has been supported with fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Residency, the Archibald Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.