Alexander Chee was born in Rhode Island, but grew up in his paternal grandfather’s house in Seoul, then Truk, Hawaii, Guam, and finally Maine. To borrow Chee’s own words, he is “Half Korean, all queer.”
After graduating from Wesleyan University, Chee spent two years in San Francisco before moving to New York in 1991. While in San Francisco, Chee was involved with both Queer Nation and ACT UP. In New York, while continuing to write, he worked at the bookstore, “A Different Light,” and also served as an assistant editor at Out magazine.
Chee then went on to receive his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1994 (he writes about the decision to apply and attend in his essay, “My Parade”) and has since taught at Wesleyan University, Amherst College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia University, the University of Texas-Austin, and currently teaches at Dartmouth College. At Amherst College, he was the visiting writer from Fall 2006 to Spring 2010.
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In 2001, Chee published his first novel, Edinburgh, which tells the story of a Korean-American boy named Fee. The story is narrated in the first-person present tense, and follows Fee as he grows up in Maine and joins the Pine State Boys Chorus. Through the choir, Fee meets Peter, and much of the narrative spirals around their friendship.
Edinburgh is a devastating story, but with a particular clarity of voice. I especially love Chee’s one-sentence paragraphs and the dialogue among the young boys (all of which is without quotation marks). These moments are striking precisely because they are understated, quotidian, and ordinary. They ring of childhood. Fee says, for instance: “Something feels wrong here, I say. / What do you mean, they ask at the same time. / Jinx, I say.”
I am also grateful for the way Chee articulates Fee’s relationship to whiteness. Through Fee’s watchfulness, the things he observes, the reader understands how whiteness structures and inflicts violence on his story. Chee delicately captures the sense of isolation and hurt that accompanies a stripping of agency inextricably tied to Fee’s racial identity.
Chee’s second novel, The Queen of the Night, was published in 2016. As a historical novel set in 19th century France, it seems very far away from Edinburgh, which Chee himself describes as autobiographical fiction (read further in “The Autobiography of my Novel”). But while The Queen is a very different novel — even just in terms of its scale — I find many aspects of the writing familiar. In the first chapter, I was struck by another of Chee’s one-sentence paragraphs; it came after a long description of protagonist Lilliet Berne’s public profile — the mystery of her, the ambiguity, her masks — and the line simply read: “The voice, at least, was true.”
Chee’s latest book, a collection of essays titled, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, was published in April 2018. Intriguingly, it shares its first chapter name with the first section name from The Queen of the Night. Both are: “The Curse” (a nice easter egg of continuity across his work). The Washington Post describes the collection as possessing a “quiet intimacy.”
It seems to emerge quite naturally out of Chee’s publication history already brimming with autobiographical writing published in various magazines and newspapers. And many of these pieces also weave in discussions of writerly craft and practical advice for other writers. In “My Inheritance Was My Father’s Last Lesson To Me And I Am Still Learning It,” for instance, in addition to writing about his own relationship to money, Chee offers the reader his own concrete rules for operating as a writer, asking for money, and trying to make a living. “My Parade,” mentioned earlier in this bio, describes Chee’s decision to pursue an MFA. A blog post from The Center for Fiction, “Research Your Life,” provides insight on the importance of asking questions, particularly about the things you think you already know about. (He also articulates the importance of this practice in an interview with The Stranger: “the things I needed to research the most were the things I thought I did not need to. Those parts are usually where your blind spots hide.”)
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All this to say: Chee is a writer who puts much of his life into both the literary page and the wider literary world through his articles, blog posts, and many social media accounts. He is generous in his craft, and generous to the writing world that he lives in.
A Selected Bibliography
Books
Edinburgh. Welcome Rain LLC, 2001. (Also Macmillan, 2002; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)
The Queen of the Night. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
Essays & Articles
“Research Your Life.” The Center for Fiction.
“Korean Enough: Alexander Chee on New Korean American Fiction.” Guernica. June 14, 2008.
“My Parade.” Buzzfeed. February 27, 2014. (Also appears in “MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction,” n+1, Fall 2010).
“The Courage of Being Queer.” The New Republic. June 14, 2016.
“Girl.” Guernica. March 16, 2015.
“Future Queer.” The New Republic. June 23, 2015.
“How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.” Buzzfeed. February 8, 2016.
“In Spain, Secrets and a Possible Betrayal.” The New York Times. April 19, 2017.
“On a Remote Greek Island, Learning to Take a ‘Real’ Vacation.” The New York Times. July 12, 2017.
“My First (and Last) Time Dating a Rice Queen.” The Stranger. June 21, 2017.
“My Inheritance Was My Father’s Last Lesson To Me And I Am Still Learning It.” Buzzfeed News. January 28, 2018.
“Release.” Tin House. March 12, 2018 (Also appears in Go Home! Feminist Press & Asian American Writers’ Workshop, March 2018).
“The Autobiography of My Novel.” The Sewanee Review Vol. CXXVI No. 2. Spring 2018.
Connections to other local/formerly local writers
With Ocean Vuong:
“Sound of Silence.” Bon 71. Autumn/Winter 2016.
Interviews
Cameron, Claire. “Maybe It Was Worth It: The Millions Interviews Alexander Chee.” The Millions. February 1, 2016.
Lichtblau, Julia. “Horizontal Feminists: An Interview with Alexander Chee.” The Common. February 2, 2016.
Chung, Catherine. “High-Wire Acts: An Interview with Alexander Chee.” Asian American Writers’ Workshop: The Margins. March 2, 2016.
Ryan, Marin. “‘I Would Never Forgive Myself if I Let the Book Go Out.’” Slate. February 4, 2016.
Smith, Rich. “Writing Advice from Alexander Chee.” The Stranger. April 11, 2018.
Links to Social Media
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cheemobile/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexanderchee
Tumblr: http://alexanderchee.tumblr.com/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/alexanderchee/
Tiny Letter: https://tinyletter.com/alexanderchee
WordPress: https://koreanish.wordpress.com/
Note: This page was created by Spencer Quong