My new lyric essay is now out in The @kenyonreview.bsky.social! Read it here: kenyonreview.org/piece/emotio...

Just updated my writer bio (nikchanghoon.com) and you know what? It makes me smile. My deepest thanks to every instructor, mentor & fellow artist who's carried me (not to mention my literal words) forward, when "forward" can often feel like falling behind, falling asleep, or just plain falling.

It began with a prompt at the 2024 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop: "Write a lyric essay that takes on an unexpected form." I wrote something, revised & delivered it at the participant reading, and was encouraged to submit it. Still in disbelief that it will appear in the @kenyonreview.bsky.social!

There is no better feeling than meeting fellow adoptee writers who are committed to telling the historical & emotional truths about adoption #AWP25

Adoptee writer power

What @shannongibney.bsky.social said!

Blown away by the work of all these adoptee writers: youtube.com/@adopteelite...

My first adult memory of culture dysphoria: realizing my own language was written on the back of a package of photo paper, and not knowing exactly which one it was.

"Did you hit your word count goal today...?"

Yesssssss

Contacted my legislators to urge restored funding for #Fulbright & #CriticalLanguageScholarship (CLS) programs. I reunited with my first mother while on a Fulbright grant in 2010 and met her again after supervising the CLS Korea program in 2016. My life literally would not be the same without them.

I'm so glad I have a dog whose boundless energy motivates me to get up and write

An old essay I wrote for my Korean language class ~2008. I am describing my search & reunion and clearly struggling to do so in a grammatically correct way. 3rd sentence: "I also thought a lot about whether my birth mother wouldn't want to meet me even if I wanted to meet her."

For adoptees, what is "speculation" other than our everyday existence? Not just our alternate (non-adopted) worlds & selves, but also: what if our second parents understood adoption as a capitalist system? our first parents spoke fluent English? our searches & reunions actually worked out? etc. etc.

Processing lately: how unconditional love can also include my own agency, boundaries & grieving over what a family member is unable to be or provide. That it's ok to be purely selfish to understand how I would want to be loved, accept how I am actually loved & grieve (let go of?) the difference

Last night I made 떡볶이 (spicy Korean rice cake). I cook Korean food often but typically not 떡볶이and fortunately it turned out Korean wife-approved. These small victories mean a lot to me, more than I'm sometimes willing to admit. #KoreannessReclamationProject

This one should be good! @adoptionmosaic.bsky.social

Started as a nonfiction reader for a lit mag recently. It's already helping me see my own writing in new ways. Also, people format SO differently.

I haven't heard from my first (birth) mother in a half year. Last time this happened, I was considering flying to Korea or hiring a PI. This time, with more context & processing, I am learning to accept that even if she explains later, there is much she chooses to withhold #thisisadoption

KAAN is offering three different versions of a webinar discussion on the PBS docu that came out last fall: linktr.ee/KAANcommunity

One of the obsessions I've been writing into lately: short track speedskating. I imagine a lot, wish a lot, regret some about starting this sport so late. Leaning into turns (always left, lol) feels like what my body was designed to do. Hockey was ... not 😂

Can't imagine my memoir project, writing life nor my human heart w/o @tinhouse.bsky.social Winter Workshop & our brilliant CNF workshop leader @nicolechung.bsky.social. "Back to writing" never felt so good! Deep thanks to @almajor.bsky.social & Lance Cleland for investing so much in us as writers.

Because some days, the name of the poet, teacher & mentor who's left an indelible mark on you & your writing over the past decade appears in your inbox, for the most glorious of reasons. Congrats, @sunyungshin.bsky.social !!! May 2026 can't come soon enough~

I ended up leaving my house like this yesterday. metaphor for: adhd life (actually real tho). korean-american cultural ID? light amid darkness? hip-spine misalignment?

Can't wait to return to this beautiful mountain for the 100th year of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, this time as a staff scholar! August can't come soon enough~

Cannot contain my excitement for this! @shannongibney.bsky.social #AdopteeLitFest2025

Took @jaminlin.bsky.social's "Style, Structure and Self-Accommodation" craft intensive via @tinhouse.bsky.social today & felt so understood as a neurodivergent writer & person

Omg TY @vesnajaksiclowe.bsky.social! All the same back to you & your work ~

Still can't believe it: an essay that started as a poem in an adoptee poetry workshop won the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize in Creative Nonfiction & just went live in the Bellingham Review today. It takes the form of a letter to my Korean bio father, who refuses to meet me: bhreview.org/articles/aba...

Writing conferences in general make me so happy. They make me ecstatic when they're unexpectedly full of other adoptee writers (domestic, intercountry, transracial, etc.) whose work spans all genres imaginable, and how we all root for each other in our collective efforts to center #adopteevoices

I am a former strategic comms / speechwriting professional and my wife is a UX designer. It took us collectively 30+ mins to figure out how to pay our health insurance premium on our provider's own user portal. The trick: you have to search "payment" in the search box to be taken to a 3rd-party site

This is the second consecutive year I will be spending the holidays apart from family. It is my choice, but not one that I choose joyfully. How difficult it is to be loved in the way we are asking. We are not asking for too much.

All I want for Christmas is to live in an area where "Asian" isn't the name of a grocery aisle

All this month I'm writing a poem a day to support @tupelopress.bsky.social! Follow my progress and consider making a small donation to support one incredible indie publisher: www.tupelopress.org/the-december...

I'm thrilled to share that my poem 도장 (Dojang) appears in the Winter 2025 Issue of The Plentitudes! www.theplentitudes.com/piece/___%EB...

Learning craft from the outside in is essential to any artist; equally as important is channeling the craft that already lies within.

Writing a poem can take a lot out of you. Sometimes, the recovery afterward feels like part of the poem itself

ADHD productivity hack: the new iPhone mirroring feature on macOS Sequoia lets you play movies via your phone app, but only the audio (at least for Disney+). This means I can "listen" to Home Alone without the temptation of watching it, so as not to interfere with the actual task of writing a poem.

Helping daily my word count reach new heights ...

When someone dies, we go searching for poetry. But I want elegies while I’m still alive... I want ballads, I want ugly, grating sounds, I want repetition, I want white space... and even center-aligned italicized poems that rhyme, and most of all — feelings. —Jenny Zhang

This year I ascended many kinds of mountains. One of them: the ⛰️ of self-doubt & denial that I deserved to take time off to prioritize my memoir, infused with a nagging fear that "it was too late" to start. Looking back, I'm much healthier now & glad my wife & I prioritized savings when we did.

Per the BBC: "Representative Lee Seong-yoon, of South Korea's main opposition party ... said he had to climb over a 1.5m (4.9ft) tall fence to get into the assembly because police blocked him, even with identification that he was a lawmaker." www.bbc.com/news/live/cn...

S. Korean president 윤석열 declared a state of bogus "martial law." All 190 National Assembly members have just voted to block it. Per the AP: "Yoon's move...was vocally opposed even by the leader of his own party, Han Dong-hoon."

I'm writing a poem a day all this month to support @tupelopress.bsky.social! Follow my progress & if your resources allow, consider a donation to one incredible indie press: www.tupelopress.org/the-december...

Another one of my poems will have a published home later this month! Excited to share more soon. This is my third poem accepted for publication this year; many have been rejected and many more live exclusively in my computer, waiting for their moment or just basking in the joy of being written

As someone who experiences adoption on a continuous basis (separation, reunion and distance don't end at a single event), I have a complicated relationship with gratitude. My family believes they saved me from abject poverty; my birth mother tried but failed to take me back. These are equal truths.

Sometimes, the best writing inspo is found in reams of notes, recordings of craft talks & feedback from your fellow workshop participants. Other times, it's your dog's nose.

Lately I've found that the more I approach my writing with a spirit of playfulness, the more I find emotional truth & rawness on the page. Is this an ironic coincidence? Or is playfulness one of the best pathways into the core of our humanness, even & esp. the heavy, the harrowing, the haunting?

I made a thing! nikchanghoon.com