Nonfiction Writing Spring 2026

When have you failed? What did you learn from it? Koreans embraces the concept of son-mat , which means a cook’s soul is infused in the food. Only the hands of skilled cooks are able to work a miracle with simple ingredients to create a masterpiece. The first week of my stay in America was a nightmare as waves of homesickness washed over me. The Kraft mac-and-cheese that initially greeted me was artificially bright, fiercely salty, and so sticky that it coated my taste buds. It mocked the Korean dishes I craved. Given the nickname gae-ko (dog nose), because of my increased sense of smell, it made the experience even more shocking. While my Korean home gave me the warmth of minced garlic and my mother’s lavender diffuser, the Champaign apartment smelled of fresh paint and distant manure. I had to regain the memories of my home through the scent of tteokbokki , sticky rice cakes that swim in a sauce made of gochuchang and gochugaru , the sweet heat transports me back to Seoul’s bustlin...

What possessions does your family treasure? The first English phrase I memorized in Canada wasn’t “bless you” or “nice to meet you.” It was “mint condition.” I was ten years old, standing in a 7-Eleven in suburban Vancouver, staring at the wall of baseball cards behind the counter like they held the secrets to understanding my new country. My father, who spoke even less English than I did, pointed at a pack of 1995 Topps and held up two fingers. Our first foreign purchase: two packs of baseball cards and the beginning of an unexpected education. Back in Seoul, I collected manhwa cards and knew every character in my favorite series. But baseball cards were different. They were not just pictures; they were cultural windows that I desperately wanted to look into. Each card came with its own universe: statistics, stories, vocabulary like ERA, RBI, batting average, and rookie year. While my classmates were learning about history from textbooks, I was learning it through the stories on the b...