Alexander Chee

In the Paris of the Second French Empire, what did it take to rise from courtesan to diva? From a ferociously talented writer who is "the fire, in my opinion. And the light" (Junot Diaz) comes a blazing portrait of a woman who creates her own fate.

The Queen of the Night

Shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay Named a Best Book of 2018 by TIME, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Paste, Bitch, Bustle, The Chicago Review of Books and iBooks As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as 'masterful' by Roxane Gay, 'incendiary' by the New York Times, and 'brilliant' by the Washington Post. With How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his first collection of nonfiction, he secures his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's exploration of the entangling of life, literature and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these interconnected essays he constructs a self, growing from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckoning with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and America's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing – Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley – the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

A gifted Korean American man confronts the terrors of his past as an adult when he confronts the molestation he suffered at the hands of his choir director.

A Novel

Edinburgh

"From the author of The Queen of the Night, an essay collection exploring how we form our identities in life, in politics, and in art"--

essays

How to write an autobiographical novel

The Weddings

The Best American Essays 2022

Robert Atwan

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee. Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

"One of the great queer novels, and great American novels, of our time. It's just so good." —Brandon Taylor, GQ A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Winner of the James Michener/Copernicus Society Fellowship Prize * Lambda Literary Foundation Editor’s Choice Award “[Chee] says volumes with just a few incendiary words.” —New York Times “Arresting . . . profound and poetic . . . Chee’s voice is worth listening to.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Alexander Chee gets my vote for the best new novelist I’ve read in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic—and pure.” —Edmund White Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys’ choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone. Told with “the force of a dream and the heft of a life,”* Edinburgh marked Chee “as a major talent whose career will bear watching” (Publishers Weekly). “A coming-of-age tale in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.” —Washington Post

Alexander Chee

Books

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