Click to read my new essay in The Kenyon Review

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Click to read my new essay in The Kenyon Review ~

Headshot of the author wearing a white sweater with horizontal blue and gray strips.

Korean adoptee. Memoirist. Poet.

Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈 (he/him) is a Korean transracial adoptee, memoirist and poet based in Minneapolis. His creative nonfiction won the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize (Bellingham Review) and was named a finalist for The Iowa Review Award in nonfiction. His poetry has appeared in The Plentitudes (Winter 2025) and the Blue Earth Review (2024 Minnesota BIPOC Emerging Writer Award Runner-Up), and was named a 2024 MAYDAY Micro-chapbook Contest finalist. His most recent essays are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review and The Texas Review, respectively.

Nik is a 2024-25 alum of the Bread Loaf, Kenyon Review and Tin House writers workshops, and will attend the 2025 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as a staff scholar in poetry. Since 2023 he has trained under some of the United States' most acclaimed writers and poets, including Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Mitchell S. Jackson, Nicole Chung, Jami Nakamura Lin, Emilly Prado, Jenny Boully, Rajiv Mohabir, Sun Yung Shin, Q.M. Zhang, Shannon Gibney and Michael Kleber-Diggs.

LEAVE ME, DON’T LEAVE ME, his memoir-in-progress, attempts to reconstruct his adoption origin story through personal narrative, epistles to first-family members, and speculative interstitials (e.g, to converse with his non-adopted self). As he unearths his own version of the truth, he finds acceptance of the self he has gained – even at the irreversible cost of the one he has lost. The memoir also critiques intercountry adoption as a capitalistic practice and argues for reparations to the 200,000-plus Koreans exported to Western countries since the Korean War.

In past lives Nik has worked as a DEI practitioner, executive speechwriter, campaign communications director, writing center instructor and Korean high school English teacher through the Fulbright program. He enjoys taking walks with his wife and their very spoiled golden doodle, whose hobbies include barking at perfectly nice pedestrians and attempting to befriend the neighbor’s chickens.

Praise

Read Nik’s award-winning essay: “Abandoned supposings: A letter to my non-father’s silence”

2024 Winner, Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction

“Abandoned supposings: A letter to my non-father's silence is a moving invitation into a complex relationship between an adoptee in adulthood and an estranged birth parent.

The epistle weaves throughout two generations of history, documents the creation of personal archives, and considers the impacts of fuzzy memory and translation, resulting in a beautifully complicated, textured reading experience.

We are so lucky to witness the writing, the remembering, and the subsequent rewriting before settling into something like resolution on behalf of this writer."

- Emilly Prado, author of Funeral for Flaca, winner of the 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award

Work & awards

    • 2025 Staff Scholar (poetry), Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

    • 2024 First Prize, Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, Bellingham Review (selected by judge  Emilly Prado out of nearly 750 submissions), for "Abandoned supposings: Letters to my non-father's silence"

    • 2024 Finalist, The Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction (judged by Sarah Viren) for "Abandoned supposings: Letters to my non-father's silence"

    • 2024 Runner Up, Minnesota BIPOC Emerging Writer Award in Poetry, Blue Earth Review, judged by Michael Kleber-Diggs, for poems "suposer - part one," "suposer - part two," and "post- and pre-"

    • 2024 2nd Prize Fellow in Poetry, Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing Weekend Writer Fellowship, for "Primal supposings: Poems on transracial adoption"

    • 2023 Finalist, MAYDAY Poetry Microchapbook Contest, judged by Sophia Terazawa for "Primal Supposings"

    • 2009-2011 Fulbright Grantee, South Korea

    • 2008 Third Prize, Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics National Essay Contest, for “Ethics of Reclaiming,” examining South Korean national policies toward and collective imagination of its 200,000-plus overseas adoptees

    • 2005 State of Minnesota Winner, VFW Voice of Democracy Audio Essay Contest

    • 2005 Eagle Scout (fun fact: I used to be able to tie a one-handed knot in mid-air)

    • 2025 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (Staff Scholar), Poetry with Ishion Hutchinson

    • 2025 Tin House Summer Workshop, Creative Nonfiction with Ingrid Rojas Contreras

    • 2025 Kenyon Review Adult Residential Writers Workshop, Creative Nonfiction with Mitchell S. Jackson

    • “Writing Into the Void: Strategies for Tackling Estrangement in Your Writing,” workshop I co-led with Lora Alegria & Summer Sullivan, 2025 Adoptee Literary Festival

    • 2025 Tin House Winter Online Workshop, Creative Nonfiction with Nicole Chung

    • 2024 Tin House Autumn Workshop, Creative Nonfiction with Emilly Prado

    • Fall 2024 Corporeal Writing “Writing From the Boundaries: The Craft of Fabulist and Speculative Nonfiction” with Jami Nakamura Lin

    • 2024 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Nonfiction with Jenny Boully

    • 2024 Kenyon Review Adult Residential Writers Workshop, Creative Nonfiction with Rajiv Mohabir

    • 2023-24 Loft Literary Center Year-Long Creative Nonfiction & Memoir Writing Project with Sun Yung Shin

    • Winter 2024 Kenyon Review Winter Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Michael Kleber-Diggs, Grace Talusan & Shannon Gibney

    • Fall 2023 Writing Into Silence Workshop with Q.M. Zhang

    • Fall 2023 Asian Adoptee Poetry Workshop with Lee Herrick & Jennifer Kwon Dobbs

    • Spring 2019 Loft Literary Center Memoir: The Wealth of Presence and Absence with Sun Yung Shin

    • Fall 2015 Flash Fiction Workshop with Matthew Salesses

    • Spring 2015 Grub Street Novel Builder with Matthew Salesses

    • Summer 2012 Loft Literary Center Young Adult Literature 101 with Swati Avasthi

“post- and pre-” | Blue Earth Review | Spring 2024

Get in touch.

I’m passionate about connecting with artists across all genres and mediums!

I also offer consultations on submitting to literary journals and contests, establishing a successful writing practice (especially outside a traditional MFA track) and building a supportive community of writers who encourage you to take new creative risks.