Alexander Chee | Red Room Writer Profile

Alexander Chee is the author of the novel Edinburgh, a winner of the Asian American Writers' Workshop Lit Award, the Lambda Literary Awards' Editor's Choice Prize, and the Michener/Copernicus Prize.
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Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson; Close to the Knives, by David Wojnarowicz; No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July; The Children's Hospital, by Chris Adrian; Anna Karenina, by Count Leo Tolstoy; My Sister's Hand In Mine, by Jane Bowles; Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys; Dictee, by Theresa Hak Yung Cha; Joan Of Arc, by Vita Sackville-West; Black Tickets, by Jayne Anne Phillips; Ronin, by Frank Miller; Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin; The Complete Works of Billy The Kid, by Michael Ondaatje; The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson; Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion; The Silent Woman, by Janet Malcolm; everything by Guy Davenport; the entire Pliocene Epoch tetrology by Julian May; the complete body of work by Los Bros Hernandez (Love and Rockets); Vols. 1-28 of Lone Wolf and Cub, Scott Pilgrim 1-4 thus far; Paul Hornschmeier's Mother Come Home; Klezmer, the Little Vampire and The Rabbi's Cat, by Joann Sfar.

Anne Carson, Deborah Eisenberg, Richard Bausch, Sigrid Nunez, Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, James Baldwin, Ursula K. LeGuin, Los Bros. Hernandez.

Connections

When To Get Your MFA. Or Not.
November 25, 2009
- 995 miles from Iowa to New York doesn't really describe the distance.This came in via email last night from a reader, and I was actually writing a post to address this. Q: I am debating applying to MFA programs but am not sure how worthwhile they are. What made you decide to get your MFA? I've heard some complain that MFA's didn't improve their writing while other writers said they wanted the ...
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Why Must the Novel Be Boring?
September 11, 2009
- Yesterday, in my Fiction II class, as the students introduced themselves I asked them to speak about what they'd been reading over the summer. One student impressively admitted to reading both Underworld and Infinite Jest. Another, though, shyly said she was reading YA novels. "I suspect they're more fun," she said. "To read or to write," I asked. "Both," she ...
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Bad Novel, Good Friend
August 26, 2009
- Over at Cary Tennis' Salon advice column today, he handles one of the most important questions of our age: What do you say when you don't like a friend's novel? And, I disagree with the answer. Here's the letter: Two days ago, my friend sent me the final draft of a novel she's been working on for the past six months. Well, I've read it. I know she's waiting for feedback, but I have no idea what ...
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