Literary Arts Institute Lectures
LAI Public Reading & Conversation: Alumni Poets and Essayists Jolene Brink and Nik Chang Hoon
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
9-17-2026
Sponsoring Department(s)
Literary Arts Institute
Abstract
Jolene Brink was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Her first poetry collection, Overburden won the Walt MacDonald First Book Award. Her chapbook Peregrine received the Merriam-Frontier Award from the University of Montana, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Orion, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, The Carolina Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere.
Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈 (attended SJU as Nik Nadeau) ) is a Korean transracial adoptee, memoirist and poet. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Texas Review, and the Bellingham Review, where it won the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction. His memoir-in-progress, LEAVE ME, DON’T LEAVE ME, reconstructs his adoption origin story through personal narrative, letters to his Korean first family and speculative conversations with his non-adopted self.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Marston, Rachel; Chang Hoon, Nik; and Brink, Jolene, "LAI Public Reading & Conversation: Alumni Poets and Essayists Jolene Brink and Nik Chang Hoon" (2026). Literary Arts Institute Lectures. 37.
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/lai_lectures/37