Chang-rae Lee

Novelist Chang-rae Lee is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Department of English at Stanford University. Lee is the author of six novels: Native Speaker (1995), A Gesture Life (1999), Aloft (2004), The Surrendered (2010), which was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, On Such a Full Sea (2014) which was a Finalist for the NBCC and won the Heartland Fiction Prize, and his most recent novel, My Year Abroad (2021).

His novels address World War II, the Korean War, and contemporary American racial relations with a high degree of lyricism and formal ambition. He imagines the world from the perspectives of Koreans, Korean Americans, and non-Korean Americans, and tackles critical themes including: war and memory; trauma and recovery; national identity and pluralism; and gender and family. His works have won numerous awards and citations, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Literary Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.