Chang-rae Lee

Celebrated novelist Chang-rae Lee was the first director of the Creative Writing MFA program at Hunter College, from 1999 to 2002. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee emigrated to the United States when he was three, and his work often explores themes of immigration, assimilation, and the modern Asian and Asian-American experience.

Lee's first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel and the American Book Award. After the publication of his second novel, A Gesture Life (1999)—listed as one of the best books of the year by several newspapers and magazines—The New Yorker named Lee one of the 20 best authors under 40 in the USA. 

His subsequent novels are Aloft (2004); The Surrendered (2010), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; On Such a Full Sea (2014), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle and winner of the Heartland Fiction Prize; and his most recent novel, My Year Abroad (2021). 

In 2021, the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized Lee with an Award of Merit for lifetime achievement in the novel, and he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has also received the Anisfield-Wolf Literary Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and numerous anthologies. 

After teaching at Hunter, Lee became the director of Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing, and he now teaches at Stanford. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale, and the University of Oregon.