Shin Yu Pai
Poet, Curator, Oral Historian, Photographer, and Educator
An award-winning poet and oral historian, Shin Yu Pai has published several books, including Adamantine (White Pine, 2010), Sightings: Selected Works [2000-2005] (1913 Press), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed)), and Equivalence (La Alameda).
Many of Pai’s works are limited edition artist books that incorporate richly visual and textural elements including letterpress, innovative hand-bindings, hand-dyed papers, and fine printing. Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks, 2007), a collaboration with John Cutrone and Seth Thompson of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, features a book sewn into a concertina structure, bound with boards wrapped in paper printed with beeswax and stained with persimmon dye. The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz, 2006) was designed by Eliza Wilson-Powers and incorporates found materials from Japanese pop magazines and features a hand-sewn binding derived from traditional hotel ledger books. Ten Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (Third Ear Books, 1998) features the Chinese calligraphy of Keith Kumasen Abbott, with letterpressed covers by Brad O’Sullivan of Smokeproof Press.
Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn Artists Alliance, 2008) is a collaborative project that Shin Yu assisted in organizing with filmmakers Tom Gilroy and Jim McKay. The Booklyn project drew its inspiration from The Haiku Year, (Soft Skull Press, 1998) and engaged several of the initial project’s original writers, while also branching out to include new voices.
In addition to her work as a poet, Shin Yu has exhibited her visual work at The Paterson Museum, Harvard University, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 516 Gallery in Albuquerque, and The Three Arts Club of Chicago. She has collaborated with individual artists and groups as diverse as Hedwig Dances and the Hudson Exploited Theater Company. Commissions have included new texts inspired by the contemporary art collections at the Dallas Museum of Art. Shin Yu’s poetry was also selected for the national Poetry-in-Motion program sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and is installed on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system.
An invited speaker at public libraries, major universities, and literary festivals across North America, she has traveled to Canada, Taiwan, and China, where she participated as an inaugural fellow in the Life of Discovery Program sponsored by the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the program paired American writers with ethnic minority writers in China to inspire collaborative and cultural exchange.
In her most recent book, Adamantine, the poet explores the strength of stone and spirit, disarming hardness to explore the power of the human spirit to transform itself through adversity. Drawn from global news stories, the subjects of the poems in this collection range from the tallest man in the world, an Olympic medallist, and a burning monk to a family stranded in the Oregon wilderness. An ongoing investigation of the poet’s interest in the visual arts, a suite of poems contemplates the work of Goya, Warhol, Rothko, Cornell, and Calder, as well as master artists and craftsmen from the Eastern traditions.
Pai’s deep engagement with philosophical themes have led to the inclusion of her work in anthologies such as America Zen: A Gathering of Poets (Bottom Dog Press) and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publications). Shin Yu was a featured presenter at the 2009 Montreal Zen Poetry Festival and has also had work published in Zen Monster and Tricycle Magazine.
Shin Yu has taught poetry at Southern Methodist University, The University of Texas at Dallas, The Writers Garret, Gemini Ink, Inkberry, The Poetry Center of Chicago and Grub Street, and served as the 2004 Peter Taylor Fellow at Kenyon College. She currently works with undergraduate students at Hendrix College as a poetry thesis reader.
She has completed residencies at The Seattle Art Museum, The MacDowell Colony, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Soul Mountain, Centrum Foundation, Ragdale Foundation, and the Taipei Artist Village. Since 2010, she has been a member of Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Workshop for Writers.
Shin Yu has curated and produced events at the Women’s Museum of Dallas, the Crow Collection of Asian Art, the Rubin Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum. She is former Programming Director for WordSpace and currently, she serves as Associate Director of the Hendrix Murphy Programs in Literature and Language at Hendrix College.
Contact the lecture bureau for booking information, lecture schedules, speaking engagement questions and to check the availability of Shin Yu Pai appearing at your next special event.