The stories your grandmother meant to tell you.
Each week we send a single question to the Korean-speaking elders in your family. They reply in Korean. We translate into English for the family that comes after — and at year's end, we bind it all into a hardcover book.
A year of questions,
a lifetime of answers.
From a single weekly email to a hardcover book — here's the full rhythm of a year with Kinshare.
- IThe question arrives
A single prompt, by email, every Sunday.
No app to learn, no password to remember. Each week Kinshare sends one question — about a place, a person, a meal, a first job — to the storyteller in your family. They reply in whatever language feels like home.
Week 14어릴 적 어머니가 자주 해주시던 음식은?What dish did your mother make for you often? - IITheir words, translated
We translate, keeping the voice intact.
Their reply goes from Korean into English — and back — with a careful hand that preserves idiom, rhythm, and the small jokes only they would make.
The same story, two readersKO · 한국어EN · English - IIITogether, as a family
Everyone adds the margins.
Grandchildren add photos. Siblings add names and dates. Your mother corrects the spelling of her cousin's village. The story belongs to everyone, and every hand is recorded in the final book.
Family thread · 6 notes this week지훈 added: "빵집은 서면동이 아니고 안락동이었어요"Julia added a photograph - IVA book on your shelf
Fifty-two stories, bound in cloth.
At year's end, Kinshare returns a Smyth-sewn hardcover: every story, every translation, every photograph, every correction. One copy for the writer, one for each child, one for the future.
Volume One · 248 pagesPrinted in Portland, OregonSmyth-sewn · acid-free · cloth-bound
Volume One · 2026
we kept
in our pockets
A book that outlives the server it was written on.
Every Kinshare book is printed on paper chosen to still be readable a hundred years from now. One copy is included with your membership; additional copies are $58 each.
- Binding
- Smyth-sewn hardcover, linen cloth
- Paper
- 120 gsm uncoated, acid-free
- Type
- Newsreader + Noto Serif KR
- Dimensions
- 7 × 9.5 in · roughly 240 pages
- Foreword
- Space for a note from the family
- Index
- People, places, dishes, dates
From kitchens and living rooms around the world.
My kids finally understand what their grandmother lived through. She's eighty-four — and she writes every Sunday now.
The translations let my American grandchildren read the stories I wrote in Korean. It's the closest thing to sitting beside them.
We added our own edits to Dad's stories — place names, relatives, small corrections. He loves seeing us in the margins.
I started Kinshare after my grandmother died in the middle of a sentence. She'd been telling me about the bakery across from her childhood home in Busan — the kind of story I'd heard a hundred times and never written down.
For a year I asked my mother, my aunts, my halmeoni one question a week. Small, specific questions. What did Sunday smell like when you were ten? Who taught you to ride a bicycle? What did your mother say when she was angry? They wrote back in Korean. I translated everything by hand into English.
At the end of that year I had a book my children will be able to read to their children. That book is what we are trying to give you.
Write soon,
One price. The whole family writes.
No per-seat charges, no subscriptions. Pay once; share with every aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandchild.
Everything a family needs to write and print one hardcover volume.
- ✦52 weekly prompts over one year
- ✦Unlimited storytellers & readers
- ✦Translation between Korean and English
- ✦Collaborative editing & photo uploads
- ✦One hardcover volume, printed and shipped
- ✦Digital archive forever
For families who want multiple storytellers, multiple books — one complete library.
- ✦Everything in The Year
- ✦Up to 4 storytellers under one roof
- ✦Four hardcover volumes, one per storyteller
- ✦Coordinated design across the series
- ✦Priority translation review
- ✦Additional copies at $52 (was $58)
The honest answers.
The first question goes out this Sunday.
Sign up today and your family's first prompt will arrive in their inbox within a week. Fifty-one more to follow.