About

Shin Yu Pai was Civic Poet of Seattle (2023-2024) and is the recipient of the 2024 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America for poetic genius. She the author of 13 books, including most recently No Neutral (Empty Bowl, 2023). She is the recipient of awards from the The Academy of American Poets, City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, and The Awesome Foundation. She is a 2022 Artist Trust Fellow and was shortlisted in 2014 for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature. From 2015 to 2017, Shin Yu served as Poet Laureate for The City of Redmond. Her writing has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Tricycle Magazine, YES! Magazine, NYTimes, Zocalo Public Square, Seattle Met, ParentMap, Seattle’s Child, International Examiner, and South Seattle Emerald. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the UK, and Canada.

Shin Yu is also the writer, host, and producer of Ten Thousand Things – a chart-topping podcast on Asian American stories that she produced for three years with KUOW Public Radio, Seattle’s NPR affiliate station. During its run with NPR, the show won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, two Golden Crane Awards from the Asian American Podcasters Association and a silver from the Signal Awards. Shin Yu executive produced the last two seasons with Wonder Media Network and the show concluded in 2026. Along the way, she curated a companion exhibition at The Wing Luke Museum. A book on the podcast and its stories is forthcoming in 2027 from UW Press.

Shin Yu also co-wrote a book on psychedelic microdosing which is out now from Chronicle Books.

Shin Yu’s visual work has been exhibited at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, The Paterson Museum, The American Jazz Museum, The Three Arts Club of Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, and the International Print Center. Her video poems have screened at The Zebra Poetry Festival in Berlin and Northwest Film Forum.

Shin Yu has taught creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Hugo House, Northwest Film Forum, Henry Art Gallery, Dallas Museum of Art, Gemini Ink, Writers Garret, and Grub Street, and served as former Assistant Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Museology from the University of Washington, where she specialized in oral history. Her literary papers and archives are held at Yale University’s Beinecke Collections.