Storyteller · Writer · Preacher · Poet · Comedian
"For a while, I separated these personas. But I realized they were all seeking to tell my story, just in different forms, each of them powerful in their own way."
Upcoming Show ↓
Upcoming Show
A storytelling show about growing up between two worlds — where processed American meat meets fermented Korean tradition. Funny, tender, and unapologetically both.
Writing
Essays, stories, and reflections on why my daughter bought a $33 dollar LP to a song she already owns and other life changing, or good for chuckle writings at Medium.
Featured Essay
A month ago, in a Goodwill I found a used no-frills record player. Elina, my daughter, grabbed it before someone else stole it from her. We've been on the lookout for an LP player for months. As soon as we tested to see it worked at home, she threw my coat at me and said we are going on a record shopping spree.
Did you know records cost $33 dollars?! At least!
Thirty-three dollars gets you three months of Spotify, which gives you access to all the music you ever wanted and plays it anywhere you take your phone. Any music, anywhere! But Elina wanted to hold a record in her hand, those large flat frisbee sized discs, and feel its curved edge on her palms. She wanted to see it wobble under a needle. She wanted to hold the square record cover, appreciate the Instagram dimensioned artwork, then tilt it and watch the record slip out of that sleeve lovingly into her hands...
Read morePreaching
Preaching is the event when the people of God gather, and tell the stories in scripture, and when they are spoken, they become a new story about God who was faithful to our ancestors give fresh imaginations of love for today.
Spoken Word
Poetry is where sentences breathe — and break.
Book of Poems
A collection of poems at once personal and political, where immigrant families stake their claims, language cuts and heals, and the American dream is both invitation and exclusion.
"Samuel Son seamlessly weaves together that which we so often try to keep separate — the ordinary and the holy, spirit and body, culture, identity, and faith. In doing so, his writing guides us to an attentiveness that reveals the sacred in our own daily lives."Order on Amazon ↗
Holy Love
My cat falls, curls, and offers his stomach to pet when it suits him Luxuriates, purrs, then pads away Slides his sides against my legs to open a can Fetches hair tie for me to throw across the room, To hunt, and stay sharp, for that day when he will leave me And still I love him, like all loves, making space for loss and exquisite emptiness
Comedy
Comedy is the shortest distance between two people. And sometimes between a person and the truth they've been avoiding.
Set
What happens when a Korean-American pastor tells jokes? Mostly confusion, some catharsis, and at least one deacon who walked out. Twice.
WatchClip
A love letter to immigrant syntax — the grammar that built me, even when it bent every rule in the book.
WatchFeature
The full one-man storytelling show. Coming soon to a stage near you. (Kimchi not included. Spam is optional.)
Upcoming datesOne story.
Many
forms.
Samuel Son is a storyteller, writer, preacher, poet, and comedian. For a long time, he kept those identities in separate rooms, worried that mixing them would dilute each one. Instead, he discovered they were all the same impulse: to tell the truth in a way that lands.
"For a while, I separated these personas. But I realized they were all seeking to tell my story, just in different forms, each of them powerful in their own way. Each form offers a different emotional register to connect with others. This is the power of stories — it connects me with others and in that connects me to myself."
He is Korean-American, a pastor, a husband, a father, and a person who genuinely believes that Spam and kimchi are better together than apart. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.