Minneapolis, Minnesota- On Tuesday, January 24, lovers of language and hopeful writers will come together to enjoy a reading by local poet Sun Yung Shin and attend a free workshop on writing poetry using source material, such as historical documents, news clippings, and other literary works. Sun Yung Shin believes that “poetry should be revolutionary” (Voices From the Gaps interview) and is drawn to diverse subjects such as adoption, the complexities of language, women’s labor, and the Korean diaspora.
Sun Yung Shin is a verbal alchemist, using language to provide insightful commentaries and simultaneously create art. In her essay “Orphan: The Plural Form” (Cerise Press) she describes the separation of birth parents from child as “a miniature Big Bang. Matter exploding and drifting away from each other.” In the same essay, she comments, “I love how when you want to indicate the word itself you italicize the letters. The word gets dressed up, leans into the wind, gets seemingly darker, moves forward, speeds itself to mean The Word and not the word.”
The workshop, co-hosted by the UMN student groups FUSE, Ivory Tower, and Voices Merging, will be held in Coffman Room 326 on the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Campus from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. A free meal of Pizza Luce’s vegetarian lasagna and beverages will be provided, so come hungry for more than just literature!
Sun Yung Shin is the author of Skirt Full of Black, a collection of poetry published by Coffee House Press in 2007, which received the Asian American Literary Award for poetry in 2008. She is the co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (South End Press) and the author of bilingual Korean/English illustrated book for children Cooper’s Lesson (Children's Book Press). She will be presenting at the AWP Conference on the panel “Breaking Out of the Box: Writing and Selling the Adoption Experience” on how to respond to the publishing industry’s tendency to marginalize writing on adoption. Those interested can find samples of her work at http://www.sunyungshin.com
About:
The Writer’s Block Workshop Initiative hosts writing workshops on the University of Minnesota campus to bring together writers, artists, wannabe writers, writing lovers and anyone who is interested in the literary arts! Writer’s Block provides students with workshops facilitated by professionals in the literary field and hopes to cultivate and strengthen a diverse community of literary artists while also providing a creative outlet for publishing and acknowledgement.
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