Curious about Yi Shun Lai
Yi Shun Lai has taught writing workshops and
seminars since 2012 and in undergraduate classrooms from the time after her
debut novel, Not a
Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, was published in
2016. Yi Shun joined the Bay Path MFA program in the fall of 2019, and teaches the
course “Writing Contemporary Women's
Stories,” in which she most enjoys “watching students
learn about the many different forms that are available for them to pursue, and
then watching them put that into place.”
When it comes to
her own writing, Yi Shun admits she is curious about almost anything — except,
distinctly, earthworms. “I like people and I find them endlessly interesting.
That includes myself,” she says. “I'm always wondering why I, or someone else,
reacts certain ways. And then I get to thinking about people's origin stories —
what beliefs they may have, how they may have gotten this way or that way. I
find motivations to be ceaselessly interesting. I also like birds, food,
plants, rocks, animals, and insects.”
What she loves to
read is equally diverse. Lately, Yi Shun has been excited about Ramona
Ausubel’s magical realism; Mari Naomi’s graphic novel Turning Japanese (and graphic novels in general: “I find the way
they're constructed to be a thing to study and marvel over.”), the
psychological honesty of the heroes in Dick Francis’s books, and Abdi Nor
Iftin’s memoir Call Me American,
which she is delving into for the ShelterBox Book Club.
ShelterBox is an international disaster-relief
organization, for which Yi Shun started
fundraising in 2008 and volunteering as a response team member the year following.
“Each time I go out on deployment, I learn something new from the families
we're helping,” she says. “I think working for the agency appeals to the
forever-student in me, but I also think this is the thing I'd been looking for
and training for all my life—I just didn't know it.” She blogs about and writes
“tiny books” about her work with ShelterBox, including Your
Country is Beautiful: Notes from an Aid Worker.
Yi Shun once edited
fiction for the Los Angeles Review
and was the founding nonfiction editor of the Tahoma Literary Review, introducing CNF into the magazine’s original
mix of fiction and poetry. After about three years there, she and some MFA
friends bought the magazine from its originators, also from her MFA program. Yi Shun will be leaving at the end of June, and is
proud of what she accomplished during her tenure.Her experience at TLR made her a better writer, and much
quicker to diagnose what might not be working with any given piece. “And I have a much sharper sense of where I see
literary magazines falling in the schematic of the larger literary world,” she
says.
Yi Shun’s
recommendation to aspiring authors: “Be curious! And reach out to other writers
for support and guidance. My good friend reminded me when I was going through
the marketing for my debut novel that writing is a solitary endeavor, but
publishing is a team sport. This is very good advice.”
“At TLR, we published a number of first-time
writers and a number of undergraduates,” she says. “It's my hope that seeding
the idea that their work is worth something they can take to the bank will set
the tone for their careers and expectations of the way they value their
work.”
Next for Yi Shun will be the
publication of her memoir focusing on her relationship to outdoors sports and
representation in the outdoors; it will be published by Homebound Publications
this August. Learn more about Yi Shun at thegooddirt.org.
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ReplyDeleteLovely article; I was fortunate to have a class with Yi Shun in Fall 2019 and I found her to be multi-faceted, full of good ideas and advice, supportive, and encouraging. The class was a great experience, and now I look forward to her monthly column in The Writer magazine. Bay Path is fortunate to have her on staff.
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