Hella Asian

July 4, 2018
by Melissa Hung
Events

I’m speaking at HELLA ASIAN, a storytelling event featuring Asian American and Pacific Islander media makers and creatives. Proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit the Asian American Journalists Association’s San Francisco chapter. There will be small bites and beverages too.

Friday July 13, 2018, 7 – 10 p.m.
Impact Hub Oakland

Storyteller Line-Up:
Melissa Hung, Writer; Founding Editor, Hyphen
RJ Lozada, Filmmaker
Michelle Le, Director of Photography, Anxy Magazine
Sinduja Rangarajan, Data journalist, CIR
Robert Handa, Reporter, NBC News Bay Area
Leo Jung, Creative Director, California Sunday Magazine
The Ho’omalu Family from the Academy of Hawaiian Arts, hula dancers

Tickets available here.

Filet-O-Comfort

January 20, 2018
by Melissa Hung
Literary / News
A photo illustration of a Filet-O-Fish against a background of yellow, green, and blue.

Shondaland has published my essay on a very important topic: my love of the Filet-O-Fish — and why it was the only McDonald’s item my immigrant family would eat (besides the fries, of course). I loved hearing from so many people after this piece ran about their own McFish memories. Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s a fast-food favorite of many immigrants: Chinese, Bengali, Korean, Somali, Filipino, and more. I was moved to learn that this fish-and-cheese combo connected us all.

Illustration by Brianna Ellis-Mitchell for Shondaland

Things I Wrote in 2017

January 3, 2018
by Melissa Hung
News
A reconstructed guard tower at Manzanar. In the distance are snow-capped mountains.

As I look back on 2017, I wanted to share a few things that I wrote this year.

I wrote about my relationship with swimming and how it helps with chronic pain and writer’s block. It was my first published personal essay, thanks to editor extraordinaire Nicole Chung.

In April I wrote an essay about visiting Manzanar, site of an internment camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

In August, in the midst of Hurricane Harvey, I penned a love letter to Houston, my hometown.

Journalism wise, I reported on gentrification in Chinatowns across America.

I interviewed educators, parents, and kids about how youth and schools are coping with the political climate after the presidential election.

I talked to education experts about whether colleges and universities are ready to serve the increasing number of students of color.

I got to do some uplifting stories too, like this one about a 70-year-old immigrant woman who ran 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents.

I interviewed actor Danny Pudi about his childhood and his first romantic lead role in a film.

And I talked to novelist Lisa Ko about her debut novel, “The Leavers.”

Photos From the Road to Manzanar

May 4, 2017
by Melissa Hung
Journalism / Other Stuff
A sign by the side of an empty road reads, "Vacancy, Motel."

I wanted to share a few photos I took in early April  when I drove to Manzanar National Historic Site, the former internment camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated, to write this essay for NPR.

manzanar-guardtower

manzanar-garden

manzanar-memorial

manzanar-postoffice

1) Vacancy sign in Cartago, CA along U.S. Route 395. I had to drive the southern route from San Francisco because the northern route was impassable due to a storm. This added two hours to the drive. (Total drive time: about eight hours).  2) Recreation of a guard tower at Manzanar. There had been eight.  3) The remains of what was once a garden at Manzanar. Residents built gardens to make camp life feel a little more normal.  4) Offerings by the Manzanar cemetery and monument.  5) The post office in Independence, CA, the closest inhabited area to Manzanar, about six miles north.

 

To Swim is to Endure: On Living with Chronic Pain

April 20, 2017
by Melissa Hung
Literary / News
The image for "To swim is to endure," which is a painting of a female swimmer's back.

I have a personal essay on Catapult about my relationship to swimming and how it helps me get through chronic headaches and writer’s block. This essay has been many months in the making. Though part of me is wary of putting something so personal out in the world, I’m thrilled to be in Catapult. If you don’t know it, be sure to spend some time on there. The site is full of great writing.

Art by Ellen Orseck / Image via brad, flickr

A Review of Writer and Journalist Portfolio Sites

April 12, 2017
by Melissa Hung
comments 9
Journalism / Other Stuff
journoportfolio portfolio review

After a decade-long break from journalism, I returned to the field and realized that I needed a better-looking online portfolio. I’ve been keeping links to my writing clips on this website, but it’s rather text heavy. I tried adding one image per story, but the page looked rather disorganized since it’s essentially an article format with images and story descriptions piled up vertically one after the other. So, I explored portfolio sites out there for writers and journalists. (UPDATE: I’ve since figured out how to make a more visually-appealing portfolio in WordPress, which is what my site is built in, but the portfolio sites are easier to use.)

What I looked for:

  • clean and organized look
  • easy for the reader to navigate
  • easy to use on the account or dashboard end
  • looks good on mobile
  • the ability to organize content by sections (say, by type of writing or by topic)

The portfolio sites I considered:

For all the sites, you can add a clip by simply entering its URL. The sites do all the work for you, grabbing the headline, an excerpt, and an image for you. (Some do a better job at this than others. I found myself having to upload images for some clips.) All of them have editable fields in case you want to change the text or upload a different image. For stories that don’t live online, you can also upload PDFs. All of these sites also have spots for your social media handles.

At first I tried to get away with just looking at existing samples of these sites. But I realized that in order to truly understand how they worked, I had to sign up so I could experience it myself first hand.

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