Susan Choi
 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (November 2019) |
Susan Choi | |
|---|---|
 Choi at the 2019 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | 1969 (age 54–55) South Bend, Indiana, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Cornell University (MFA) |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Website | |
| www | |
Susan Choi (born 1969) is an American novelist.
Early life and education[edit]
Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana to a Korean father and a Jewish mother. She attended public schools. When she was nine years old, her parents divorced. She and her mother moved to Houston, Texas. Choi earned a B.A. in Literature from Yale University (1990) and an M.F.A. from Cornell University.[1]
Career[edit]
After receiving her graduate degree, she worked for The New Yorker as a fact checker. At this job she met her husband, Pete Wells, now the New York Times restaurant critic.[2] They reside in Brooklyn.[1]
Choi published her first novel, The Foreign Student (1998). It won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction and was a finalist of the Discover Great New Writers Award at Barnes & Noble. Her second novel, American Woman (2003), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in literature.[3] In 2010, she won the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for A Person of Interest, which was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2009.[4] In 2014, her fourth novel, My Education, won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction.[5]
With David Remnick, Choi edited an anthology of short fiction entitled Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. Her latest novel is Trust Exercise (2019), which won the National Book Award for Fiction.
As of May 2018, Choi is working on a novel employing conventions of memoir and reportage that "takes up the question of national identity, and the extent to which it coincides or does not coincide with ethnic and with cultural identity."[6]
She teaches creative writing at Yale University.[7]
Awards and grants[edit]
- Asian American Literary Award for Fiction for The Foreign Student
- Steven Turner Award for The Foreign Student
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient (2001)
- Guggenheim Fellow (2004).
- PEN/W.G. Sebald Award (2010) for A Person of Interest
- Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction for My Education (2014)[8]
- National Book Award for Fiction for Trust Exercise (2019)[9]
- Sunday Times Short Story Award (2021) for Flashlight[10]
Bibliography[edit]
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Novels[edit]
- The Foreign Student (1998), ISBN 0-06-019149-X
- American Woman (2003), ISBN 0-06-054221-7
- A Person of Interest (2008), ISBN 978-0-670-01846-8
- My Education (2013), ISBN 0670024902
- Trust Exercise (novel) (2019), ISBN 9781250222022
Children's books[edit]
- Camp Tiger (picture book, illustrated by John Rocco) (2019), ISBN 9780399173295
Short fiction[edit]
- Anthologies (edited)
- Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (2000), ISBN 0-375-50356-0 (ed. with David Remnick)
- Stories[11]
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flashlight | 2020 | Choi, Susan (September 7, 2020). "Flashlight". The New Yorker. Vol. 96, no. 26. pp. 60–66. | ||
| The whale mother | 2020 | Choi, Susan (January 2020). "The whale mother". Harper's Magazine. |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Parker, Ian (12 September 2016). "Knives Out: Pete Wells, the Times' Restaurant Critic, wants to have fun -- or else". The New Yorker. No. 46–55. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
- ^ "Finalist: American Woman, by Susan Choi (HarperCollins)". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
- ^ Cohen, Patricia (23 September 2010). "PEN American Center Names Award Winners". New York Times — ArtsBeat.
- ^ "Winners of the 26th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Announced | Lambda Literary". Archived from the original on 2020-07-28.
- ^ "Susan Choi". english.yale.edu. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
- ^ "Susan Choi | Yale Creative Writing". yalecreativewriting.yale.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-01-01. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
- ^ "Looking for summer reading? Lambda Literary Awards rain down a host of choices". Times-Picayune, June 3, 2014.
- ^ Dwyer, Colin (November 20, 2019). "National Book Awards Handed To Susan Choi, Arthur Sze And More". NPR. Archived from the original on December 22, 2023. Retrieved December 22, 2023.
- ^ "US author Choi wins £30k Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award". Books+Publishing. 2021-07-09. Retrieved 2021-07-09.
- ^ Short stories unless otherwise noted.
Further reading[edit]
- Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath (2000-01-01). Asian American novelists a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
- "Susan Choi". Contemporary Authors Online. Gale. 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
- State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, "Indiana" essay.
External links[edit]
- Official website
- Excerpt from Susan Choi's fiction in Guernica (guernicamag.com)
- Goldsea.com - interview with Susan Choi (2003)
- New York Public Library Young Lions Award finalist 2004
- link to picture of Susan Choi
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1969 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American novelists
- 20th-century American women writers
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American novelists
- 21st-century American women writers
- American novelists of Asian descent
- American women novelists
- American writers of Korean descent
- Cornell University alumni
- High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alumni
- Jewish American writers
- Lambda Literary Award winners
- National Book Award winners
- The New Yorker people
- Novelists from Indiana
- PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners
- Writers from Houston
- Writers from South Bend, Indiana
- Yale College alumni