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Chang-Rae Lee

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Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae Lee speaks to a University of Michigan class about his novel On Such a Full Sea.
Chang-rae Lee speaks to a University of Michigan class about his novel On Such a Full Sea.
Born (1965-07-29) July 29, 1965 (age 61)
South Korea
OccupationNovelist
EducationYale University (BA)
University of Oregon (MFA)
Notable works
Notable awards
SpouseMichelle Branca (1993–present)
Korean name
Hangul
이창래
Hanja
李昌來
RRI Changrae
MRI Ch'angnae

Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University.[1] He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University and director of Princeton's Program in Creative Writing.[2]

Early life

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Lee was born in South Korea in 1965 to Young Yong and Inja Hong Lee. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3 years old[3] to join his father, who was then a psychiatric resident and later established a successful practice in Westchester County, New York. In a 1999 interview with Ferdinand M. De Leon, Lee described his childhood as "a standard suburban American upbringing," in which he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, before earning a B.A. in English at Yale University in 1987. After working as an equities analyst on Wall Street for a year, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. With the manuscript for Native Speaker as his thesis, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing in 1993 and became an assistant professor of creative writing at the university. On 19 June 1993 Lee married architect Michelle Branca, with whom he has two daughters. The success of his debut novel, Native Speaker, led Lee to move to Hunter College, where he was hired to direct and teach in the creative writing program.[4]

Career

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Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won numerous awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.[1] Centered on a Korean-American industrial spy, the novel explores themes of alienation and betrayal as experienced by immigrants and first-generation citizens in their struggle to assimilate in American life.[3] In 1999, he published his second novel, A Gesture Life. This elaborates on themes of identity and assimilation through the narrative of an elderly Japanese immigrant in the United States who was born in Korea but later adopted to a Japanese family and remembers treating Korean comfort women during World War II.[5] For this book, Lee received an Asian American Literary Award.[6][7] His 2004 novel Aloft received mixed reviews from critics and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian-American, but instead a disengaged and isolated Italian-American suburbanite.[8] It received the 2005-2006 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Literature category.[9] His 2010 novel The Surrendered won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize[10] and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[11] Lee's next novel, On Such a Full Sea (2014), is set in a dystopian future version Baltimore, Maryland, called B-Mor, where the main character, Fan, is a Chinese-American laborer working as a diver in a fish farm.[12] It was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.[13]

In 2016, Lee joined the faculty of Stanford University, where he is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English.[14] He previously taught creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.[15] He was also a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.[16]

Lee explores issues central to the Asian-American experience: the legacy of the past; the encounter of diverse cultures; the challenges of racism, discrimination, and exclusion; dreams achieved and dreams deferred. Lee's writings have addressed the questions of identity, exile, diaspora, assimilation, and alienation.[4]

Awards and honors

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Year Title Award Category Result Ref.
1995 Native Speaker Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award — Won [17]
1996 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel — Won [18]
2000 A Gesture Life Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Fiction Won [19]
NAIBA Book of the Year Award — Won [20]
2006 Aloft Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Fiction Won [9]
2011 The Surrendered Dayton Literary Peace Prize — Won [21]
Pulitzer Prize Fiction Finalist [22]
2015 On Such a Full Sea ALA Notable Books Adult Fiction Selection [23]
2017 — John Dos Passos Prize — Won [24]

Bibliography

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Books

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Articles and book chapters

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  • "The Faintest Echo of Our Language". The New England Review. 15 (3): 85–93. Summer 1993. doi:10.1056/NEJM183609140150601. JSTOR 40242683.
  • "Coming Home Again". The New Yorker. October 9, 1995.
  • "Mute in an English-only World". In Shreve, Susan Richards, ed. (2003). Dream Me Home Safely. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-37902-6.
  • "Gut Course: Manhattan". The New Yorker. 88 (38): 72–73. December 3, 2012.
  • "Sea Urchin". First Tastes. August 19 & 26, 2002. The New Yorker. 97 (27): 39. September 6, 2021.[a]

Screenplays

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———————

Notes

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  1. ↑ Online version is titled "How Sea Urchin Tastes". First published in the August 19&26, 2002 issue.

References

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  1. 1 2 "Chang-rae Lee's 'Surrendered': Unrelentingly sad yet lovely". USA TODAY. March 15, 2010. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  2. ↑ Hui, Angela (2020-01-01). "An Interview with Chang-rae Lee". The Harvard Advocate. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  3. 1 2 Garner, Dwight (September 5, 1999). "Interview: Adopted Voice". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 July 2018. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  4. 1 2 Wu, Yung-Hsing (2005). "Chang-rae Lee". In Madsen, Deborah L. (ed.). Asian-American Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 312. Detroit: Gale.
  5. ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (August 31, 1999). "'A Gesture Life': Fitting In Perfectly on the Outside, but Lost Within". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 January 2013. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  6. ↑ Overbey, Erin (2014-04-25). "Letter from the Archive: Chang-rae Lee". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  7. ↑ Park, Yoanna; Mustofa, Ali; Kurnia, Fabiola D. (2022-09-30). "Recovery of Identity in Hidden Memory: A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee". NOBEL: Journal of Literature and Language Teaching. 13 (2): 153–162. doi:10.15642/NOBEL.2022.13.2.153-162. ISSN 2549-2470.
  8. ↑ Dean, Tamsin (June 21, 2004). "High and dry". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2 March 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
  9. 1 2 "2005-2006 Awards Winners". APALA. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  10. ↑ Young, Bill (2021-04-02). "An epic story told by Chang-Rae Lee". Wednesday Journal. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  11. ↑ "2011 Prize Winners and Finalists". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  12. ↑ Leyshon, Cressida (January 7, 2014). "'The Chorus of 'We': An Interview With Chang-rae Lee". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
  13. ↑ "2014". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  14. ↑ "Chang-rae Lee". Department of English. Stanford University. Archived from the original on 2018-06-11. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  15. ↑ "Novelist Chang-rae Lee to read at Oregon State University Feb. 9". Newsroom | Oregon State University. 2018-01-25. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  16. ↑ "Shinhan Distinguished Faculty". Underwood International College, Yonsei University | 연세대학교 언더우드국제대학. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  17. ↑ "Barnes & Noble Names Winners of the 27th Annual Discover Awards". Authorlink. May 4, 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  18. ↑ "List of PEN/Hemingway Winners". The Hemingway Society. Archived from the original on 2022-01-07. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  19. ↑ "A Gesture Life". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  20. ↑ "NAIBA Book of the Year Award". New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  21. ↑ "2011". Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  22. ↑ "Finalist: The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books)". Pulitzer Prize. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  23. ↑ Wood, Leighann (2015-02-01). "2015 Notable Books announced: Year's best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry". American Library Association. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  24. ↑ "The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature: Past Recipients and Select Works". Longwood University. Archived from the original on 2020-10-23. Retrieved 2021-11-04.
  25. ↑ Cooper, Rand Richards (1995-04-09). "Excess Identities". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  26. ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (August 31, 1999). "'A Gesture Life': Fitting In Perfectly on the Outside, but Lost Within". The New York Times. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  27. ↑ "'Aloft' from Chang-Rae Lee". NPR. 2004-04-18. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  28. ↑ Wood, James (15 March 2010). "A Critic at Large: Keeping it Real". The New Yorker. Vol. 86, no. 4. pp. 71–75. Archived from the original on 23 March 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
  29. ↑ Allfrey, Ellah (2014-01-09). "A Story Of Pluck And Courage In An Unforgiving Future". NPR. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  30. ↑ Corrigan, Maureen (January 28, 2021). "'My Year Abroad' Is A Fun Excursion — Just A Little Light On Substance". NPR. Archived from the original on 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  31. ↑ Schwartz, Alexandra (2021-02-08). "Chang-rae Lee Lets Loose in 'My Year Abroad'". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  32. ↑ Sacks, Sam (2026-08-04). "Fiction: Chang-rae Lee's 'A Tender Age'". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2026-08-08.
  33. ↑ Kroll, Justin (June 5, 2025). "Ang Lee To Direct 'Old Gold Mountain'". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
  34. ↑ Kroll, Justin (July 24, 2025). "Ang Lee's Next Film 'Old Gold Mountain' Pushing Production till Next Spring 2026". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved September 18, 2025.
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