About Karen Yin

A longtime trailblazer, Karen Yin coined the term conscious language to refer to mindful and compassionate language. Her writings and leadership in writing and editing communities helped to catapult conscious writing, editing, and design practices into the mainstream.

Her long-awaited book, The Conscious Style Guide: A Flexible Approach to Language That Includes, Respects, and Empowers, was published by Little, Brown Spark (US) and Scribe (UK) in 2024. Largely considered her life's work, fans of her work welcomed the guide into her family of acclaimed tools for communicators, which include:

• Conscious Style Guide, the first website devoted to conscious language (Poynter's Top 10 Tools for Journalists, 2018).
• The Conscious Language Newsletter, a monthly roundup of news and tools.
• Editors of Color Database, tools for diversifying your staff and sources (Writer's Digest's 101 Best Websites, 2023 and 2024).
• Diverse Databases, a database of 100-plus databases that feature underrepresented communities.
• AP vs. Chicago, a guide for anyone who gives “a dollar sign, ampersand, exclamation point, and pound sign about style."

Conscious Style Guide is recommended by industry leaders across disciplines, including The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, Independent Book Publishers Association, ACES: The Society for Editing, Society of Professional Journalists, Poets & Writers, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, We Need Diverse Books, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and several U.S. government departments and agencies, such as NASA.

Karen serves on the Chicago Manual of Style advisory board and contributed to the 18th edition (2024). The winner of the ACES Robinson Prize (Editor of the Year) in 2017 for furthering the profession of editing, Karen continues to give presentations on conscious language, conscious editing, and the craft of writing.

Karen's most significant and far-reaching accomplishments include her work with the editors of The Associated Press Stylebook, such as persuading them to create entries for bisexual and asexual in 2019, which were omitted when the terms lesbian, gay, transgender, and LGBT entered the stylebook in 2014. By addressing the source, Yin has changed the standards of publishers, editors, writers, and journalists on a massive scale.

Yin also commissioned the influential article “Drop the Hyphen in Asian American” by Henry Fuhrmann, former Los Angeles Times chair of standards and practices, for Conscious Style Guide. His commentary on the divisiveness of the hyphen and its consequential othering convinced AP Stylebook, BuzzFeed Style Guide, and several other style guides to change their guidance, which then prompted other publications, including The New York Times, to follow suit.

From 2014 through 2017, Yin was the style columnist for the now-defunct Copyediting newsletter. She was ahead of the curve in her editing philosophy and introduced many topics, such as capitalizing Black when referring to racial identity in 2016, years before major style guides adopted the style. Yin was credited by the newsletter editors with “[bringing] the ideas of sensitive language and conscious style to our pages, and that raised the value of the newsletter.” After she left to pursue fiction writing, Yin republished her Copyediting columns on either ConsciousStyleGuide.com or APvsChicago.com and continued to write about conscious language for Conscious Style Guide, covering topics such as the negative assumptions behind the term coming out, a point she later convinced AP Stylebook editors to include in the next edition. Yin also assigned articles to fellow editors to diversify the voices, such as “Why We Confuse Race and Ethnicity: A Lexicographer’s Perspective” by Kory Stamper, “A False Divide between ‘Well Educated’ and ‘Less Educated’” by Steve Bien-Aimé, and “Hapa: A Unique Case of Cultural Appropriation by Multiracial Asian Americans” by Joanna Eng.

Prior to launching the Conscious Style Guide website, Karen had a thriving freelance editorial business. She was the managing editor of three national lifestyle magazines and worked on websites, books, advertising, and packaging with clients such as Disney Editions, ArtCenter College of Design, and Manifest. Before freelancing, Karen was the head of editorial and the senior copywriter at an ad agency. She was the final eye on campaigns for Disney, Pixar, Fox, DreamWorks, Universal, and Warner Bros., including The Lord of the Rings, Batman, Shrek, The Matrix, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean. In addition to performing quality control on campaigns seen across the globe, she crafted copy that bolstered the voices and narratives of numerous brands, with messages tailored for their unique audiences.

After decades as an editor, Karen began writing books in 2019. By 2021, she had sold four books for children and one book for adults, The Conscious Style Guide. Acclaim for her writing includes fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, California Arts Council and Lambda Literary Foundation. She has won grants from Table 4 Writers Foundation and SCBWI/Smithsonian. Her flash fiction has been selected by the Los Angeles Public Library for its permanent collection and Short Story Portal.

For Karen's picture book recommendations, visit DiversePictureBooks.com.

Newsletters:

• To stay in touch with Karen's publishing career, subscribe to the Purposeful Prose Newsletter.
• To learn more about conscious language, subscribe to Karen's Conscious Language Newsletter.

Karen Yin is represented by DeFiore and Company. Inquiries: Laurie Abkemeier. 

Speaker Statement: Karen supports equity and inclusivity in the world of books and beyond. She is not available for events that discriminate against historically excluded, marginalized, or underrepresented communities.