Sun Yung Shin Nonfiction Writing Project Specifics

Nonfiction Writing Project

Online cohort led by Sun Yung Shin

Mondays on Zoom | Starting February 3, 2025 | 6-9 p.m.

Mondays on Zoom | Starting Feb 3, 2025 | 6-9 PM

Join the Waitlist for Sun Yung Shin's cohort starting on November 13 at 10AM CT for Friends of the Loft; November 14 for the general public. The registration link will go live on this page at that time. Sun Yung Shin will meet with each person who signs up to determine if your project is a good fit for the year-long project. We will reach out to the list to schedule a meeting between you and Sun Yung. Please sign up at the link below. Payment and final registration will take place after this initial call. Payment info and options are listed here.

Important Dates
Weekly Cohort Meetings

Zoom link sent in confirmation email

All times listed in US Central Time

Year-Long Writing Project Orientation

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

6–7:30 p.m.

Online, via Zoom

Final Public Reading

Tuesday, January 6, 2026

7 - 8:30 PM

Online, via Zoom

2025 Nonfiction Writing Project with Sun Yung Shin

Join me to follow that inner voice that says it’s time for you to write your book manuscript! Creativity needs support, skills, and containers in order to fulfill its potential. If you are ready to spend time giving shape to your stories and ideas—with a supportive, knowledgeable mentor, and a friendly community of like-minded people—then this is the project for you. 

No matter the goals of your project, you will be supported in writing based on a mixture of personal and collective memory and research that may include reportage, interviews, archival ephemera and more. We will learn and make use of many of the artistic craft techniques that fiction writers and poets have been using since the beginning of oral language—and that continue to evolve in exciting ways in our time. 

You will greatly expand your “toolbox” of writing skills in this writing “makeshop.” We will focus on freely and adventurously generating material on the page as we learn how to think about and use types of memory, types of time, storytelling structure, archetypes, and much more. 

The project will be responsive to your individual goals! Throughout the year, there will be the right amount of time for your questions and considerations, both during group meetings and in 1x1 meetings with your mentor. 

Once the project begins, we will dig in and write from prompts and models during every meeting. We will study the work of a wide variety of successful and compelling contemporary published writers.

Through reading, writing, discussion, lecture, workshopping, and revision, you will have the opportunity to define your project’s purpose, discover your audience, and develop (more) craft skills: POV, structure, exposition, scene, sequel, characterization, imagery, mood, pacing, setting, dialogue, interiority, rhythm, style, revision, and much more. Your instructor always uses teaching tools such as slide presentations, visuals, videos, worksheets, and shares all documents with you. 

We will be visited by thoughtful and engaging authors, agents, and publishing professionals to learn from their insights regarding living the writer’s life by sustaining a creative practice amid life’s many non-art demands, plus develop a deeper understanding of how writers pursue publishing in today’s various markets.

Books and Visiting Guests

Participants will be assigned four recent memoirs or longform creative nonfiction works to read and learn from throughout the year:

  • The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh
  • Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo 
  • Heavy by Kiese Laymon
  • Fasting for Ramadan by Kazim Ali 
Visiting Guests

Throughout the year, 4–6 visiting writers and publishing professionals will meet with your cohort as special guests. Confirmed guests for 2025 include:

  • Erika Stevens (agent) 
  • Kao Kalia Yang (memoirist)
  • David Mura (memoirist)
  • Michael Kleber-Diggs (memoirist)
CNF/Memoir Project Instructor

The 2025/2026 CNF/Memoir online cohort will be led by Sun Yung Shin