Influential Woman · Arts & Culture
Shin Yu Pai
Creator, Executive Producer, Writer & Host for Ten Thousand Things, Ten Thousand Things
Seattle, WA 98133
Her Story
About Shin Yu
Shin Yu Pai is the creator, host, and writer behind Ten Thousand Things, an award-winning podcast that she made from 2022–2024 with KUOW Public Radio/NPR and now produces independently with Acast Creative Studios. The show has won two Golden Crane awards from the Asian American Podcasters Association, Bronze and Silver Signal Awards, and a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, in addition to funding support from 4Culture, The Common Counsel Foundation, and an NEA Hope Corps grant from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture. Mashable named Ten Thousand Things as one of the best podcasts of the year in 2023. And in 2025, Shin Yu organized and curated an exhibition on Ten Thousand Things at The Wing Luke Museum, which will be on display through January 2027. A book on Ten Thousand Things is forthcoming from the University of Washington Press in 2027.
As a public radio personality, Shin Yu has guest hosted and reported on arts and culture for KUOW’s Soundside podcast. Prior to working with KUOW, Shin Yu hosted the Lyric World podcast for Town Hall Seattle, a live event series and podcast focused on contemporary poetry, which was supported by The Satterberg Foundation and Common Counsel Foundation. As an essayist, her stories have appeared in NYTimes, Tricycle Magazine, YES! Magazine, Off Assignment, Zocalo Public Square, Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine, and more.
In addition to her work as a non-fiction writer and audio storyteller, Shin Yu has published 12 books of poetry. In 2020, Entre Rios Books published Ensō, a 20-year survey and retrospective her work across creative disciplines. Shin Yu served as the Civic Poet for The City of Seattle from 2023 to 2024 and received a Poet Laureates Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for her work with community. Her poetry films have been shown at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin and around the world. In 2024, she received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America which is given for poetic genius.
She is a three-time fellow of MacDowell and has been a writer in residence at the Seattle Art Museum, Taipei Artist Village, Centrum Foundation, and Pacific Science Center. Shin Yu received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a Hiro Yamagata Fellow at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She also holds an MA in Museology from the University of Washington with a focus on oral history and community-based museums. She received a BA from Boston University in English, with minors in Eastern Religion and Spanish.
Named in 2024 as one of Seattle’s Most Influential people and a Trailblazing Woman by Seattle Magazine, Shin Yu’s literary archives were acquired by Yale University’s Beinecke Library in 2025.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Shin Yu
01What do you attribute your success to?
I am the daughter of hard-working immigrants and attribute my success to a drive to succeed, determination, and talent. In addition to that, I have a family structure and a partner who has been incredibly supportive of my creative work and been willing to make professional and personal sacrifices in order to ensure that I'm able to do the work that's important to me. That support system has been crucial to my ability to pursue the questions that are central to my life.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Cultivate curiosity and practice the difficult conversations. Embrace the break-through not the breakdown.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Develop a broad perspective that allows you to operate both inside and outside of institutions. Learn every role in a production process so that you can speak the language of your peers and meet them as an equal.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The relationship between traditional media outlets and individuals working within the creator economy is complicated. Media companies want the reach, community, and audience of creators but haven't quite figured out how to create equitable partnerships that are mutually meaningful or financially beneficial to all parties. It's important to be an entrepreneur, fundraising and friendraising savvy, protective of your IP, and to blaze your own trail.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me are community, civic engagement, spiritual living, and love.
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