Meet the Teaching Artist: Melanie Hyo-In Han on Writing Between Languages

Writing Workshops Staff
2026-03-31T08:33:46-05:00

Melanie Hyo-In Han is teaching Mother Tongue, Other Tongue: Poetry of Language, Identity, and Inheritance, a 6-week online poetry workshop beginning July 19, 2026.

During her MFA, Melanie Hyo-In Han brought a poem to workshop that included Korean, the language she speaks with her parents. She had translated every word into English, making it legible for her classmates. Her professor read it and told her she didn't need to do that. She could leave the Korean untranslated. She could even write the phrases in Hangul. Her readers, he said, were capable of sitting with what they didn't fully understand. That moment reframed everything: what she had considered a courtesy to her readers turned out to be a kind of self-erasure. She had been translating herself out of her own poem.

That experience is the foundation of Mother Tongue, Other Tongue, Han's new 6-week online poetry workshop at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature. Over six weeks on Zoom, students will learn to write poems that code-switch between languages, build around untranslatable words, and use silence, white space, and fragmentation as deliberate craft tools. Han, a Korean-African poet born in Korea, raised in East Africa, educated in the U.S., and now pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Surrey, brings a rare combination of lived multilingual experience and scholarly depth to the workshop. Students will leave with a portfolio of 4 to 6 original poems, along with the confidence to let their languages coexist on the page without apology.

Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Melanie:

Meet the Teaching Artist: Melanie Hyo-In Han

Writing Workshops: Hi, Melanie. Please introduce yourself to our audience.

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Hello! 안녕하세요. Habari gani?

My name is Melanie, and I'm a Korean-African poet and educator currently living in the U.K. I'm passionate about all things related to language and migration -- which is perhaps unsurprising for someone who was born in Korea, grew up in East Africa, educated in the U.S. and has spent most of her adult life trying to explain that combination to strangers (and sometimes immigration officers).

I write poems. I translate them. I teach people to do both. When I'm not writing or teaching, I'm probably reading (with a giant mug of tea in hand) or spending time with Cinnamon and Nutmeg, my bunnies!

Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: For a long time, I thought poetry had to follow certain rules. The poems I encountered in school were structured and formal, and while there's nothing wrong with that tradition, it didn't leave much room for someone like me, whose life was a mix of languages, cultures, and contradictions that didn't resolve neatly on the page.

What I wish someone had told me earlier is that the messiness can actually become poetic material. Blending, code-switching, fragmenting, and even breaking the rules aren't signs that you don't know what you're doing. They're legitimate poetic choices with a rich tradition behind them.

This class exists to say that out loud so that people don't spend years waiting for permission to write the way they actually think and feel and remember.

Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: I want students to leave knowing they can put a word from another language on the page... and leave it there. No footnotes, no italics, no apologetic translations tucked into the next line. Just the word, doing its work, trusted to mean something even in its untranslatability.

Beyond that, I want them to have a sense of how to move between languages structurally, such as where to break the line, where to let silence do its work, how to code-switch mid-stanza in a way that feels intentional rather than accidental, etc.

"I want students to leave knowing they can put a word from another language on the page... and leave it there. No footnotes, no italics, no apologetic translations tucked into the next line. Just the word, doing its work, trusted to mean something even in its untranslatability."

Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.

Melanie Hyo-In Han: "The person we fall in love with, we hardly ever call by their name. Because it's somehow just so obvious that it's you I'm talking to, that it's you I'm always thinking of. Who else?"

-- Fredrik Backman, My Friends

Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: The moment that stays with me happened during my MFA when I'd brought a poem to workshop about my childhood. The poem had Korean (the language I speak with my parents) in it, but I'd translated everything into English to make it legible / palatable for others in the class.

My professor read it and said, simply, that I didn't need to do that. That I could leave the Korean untranslated and that I could even write the phrases in hangul (Korean writing system) if I wanted. He reassured me that my readers were capable of sitting with what they didn't fully understand and that the untranslatability itself was part of the poem's meaning.

I remember just sitting with that for a moment. Something that had felt like a courtesy to my readers turned out to be a kind of erasure of myself and I'd been translating myself out of my own poem.

That's the moment this class is built around, really. I want to give that permission to students earlier than I received it.

Ready to stop translating yourself out of your own poems? Join Melanie for six weeks of multilingual poetry on Zoom.
Enroll in Mother Tongue, Other Tongue →

Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, a small, specific technique.

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Blackout poetry! I love the way absence does as much work as presence. You can excavate a found text and what's left is yours, but so is what's gone. I think it's so cool how the page becomes a visual arrangement of what gets to be said and what gets buried.

Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Human Acts by Han Kang. I think it's so powerful -- it takes a devastating historical atrocity and renders it in prose so beautiful and almost-poetic that it's impossible to look away. It's a book that reminds me time and time again that beauty and difficulty aren't opposites.

Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: "Find a poet you love and write like them." It sounds useful (and sometimes it is), but too often it becomes a lengthy detour away from your own voice. Emulation/imitation has its place, but not before you've been given permission to sound like yourself first. Lots of writers spend years trying to earn the right to their own distinctiveness, when that distinctiveness was there all along!

"The draft that embarrasses you may usually be closer to the real poem than the one you've polished into safety. The messy version is where the actual writing lives."

Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Most writing classes won't tell you this, but the draft that embarrasses you may usually be closer to the real poem than the one you've polished into safety. The messy version is where the actual writing lives.

Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Did anyone else read the Magic Tree House books as a kid??? I loved Jack because he was curious, always scribbling things in his notebook, but he was also going on adventures and traveling through time, landing in the middle of history and mythology and other worlds. He made me want to do the same, just with books instead of a magic tree house.

Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: Come as you are, we'll figure out the rest together.

Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?

Melanie Hyo-In Han: I love adventure and adrenaline! I've been skydiving, bungee jumping, paragliding, and I've even flown an airplane. For someone who spends a lot of her time quietly reading and writing, I have a complicated (and fun!) relationship with gravity.

Write the Poems Only You Can Write

Melanie's teaching philosophy is right there in her one-sentence description: come as you are. Whether you're fluent in multiple languages, reconnecting with a heritage tongue, or simply aware that the language you carry doesn't always fit neatly into English, this workshop will give you the craft tools and the creative permission to let that complexity live on the page. Mother Tongue, Other Tongue begins Sunday, July 19 on Zoom and runs for six weeks. Bring your languages, your silences, and your messy drafts. The real poem is already in there.

Six weeks of multilingual poetry. All levels welcome. Starts July 19 on Zoom.
Save Your Seat in Mother Tongue, Other Tongue →

WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.