Last month I had a fascinating conversation with the novelist, poet and filmmaker Ann Shin. I first interviewed Shin in 2013, around the time her collection of poetry The Family China was published. For the launch she rented a private room at Toronto’s Soho House, where she got on stage, hauled out a box of china — her actual family heirlooms — then read out a poem about her South Korean grandmother while violently smashing it piece by delicate piece. When she’d finished she hauled out another box and encouraged audience members to smash the rest. Which we did.
It was insane.
Insane for Toronto in 2013.
This time round we met on Zoom. Our 30-minute conversation covered a lot of ground (like me, Shin is a creative omnivore). Topics included her fantastic first novel, The Latest Exiles, a sweeping love story about two star-crossed North Korean defectors which recently won Canada’s prestigious Trillium award, as well as her long and established career as a documentarian, strong men, fatalism, class, storytelling, immigration, North and South Korea, Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood (where we both used to live) and why she thinks story appropriation is nonsense.
Enjoy!
Share this post