“Those two events happening so close to each other was a sobering reminder to me to really focus on what matters to me,” Choi says. “Which includes continuing to build my writing career and being there for my husband and son.”
Originally trained as a litigator, Choi hoped to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather—who served as the chief justice of South Korea’s Supreme Court—in becoming a judge in California. But though she found work at a wonderful firm in the Bay Area, the work itself felt less than wonderful.
Only after writing dispatches for a local bar association newsletter and enrolling in an MFA creative writing program did Choi find her groove. Writing has since become akin to meditation, providing Choi with a centeredness that had eluded her when she practiced law.
“The shift from vicariously observing other people’s stories to sculpting those stories myself, that new stance, I didn’t expect it but it just felt like home to my soul,” Choi says. “And writing is something that I can’t leave behind like I did with the law.”
As someone who has grown up between different cultures—Choi is a Gen-X immigrant from Seoul who grew up in the ’80s in a majority Korean community in northern New Jersey—writing is also a means of learning more about familial ties lost to the annals of history.