신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born creative nonfiction writer, poet, and children’s book author. She is the author of Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language, as well as experimental poetry/prose book Six Tones of Water; The Wet Hex, winner of the Society of Midland Author’s Award in Poetry and finalist for a 2023 Minnesota Book Award; Unbearable Splendor, winner of a Minnesota Book Award in 2017; and two other books of poetry including Skirt Full of Black, winner of an Asian American Literary Award in 2008. She is the editor/co-editor of three anthologies of essays including What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021); A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (2016); and Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (2006/2021). She is also the author of three illustrated books for children—most recently the co-authored Revolutions Are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, and Where We Come From, both finalists for Minnesota Book Awards in 2026 and 2022. She has been awarded fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, and MacDowell Foundation. She is currently the Distinguished Dayton Hudson Visiting Writer at Carleton College, a program strategist with Jerome Foundation, and an instructor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, The Multitudes, and Poetry Asylum. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.