LAN SAMANTHA CHANG Biography - Writers

 
 

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LAN SAMANTHA CHANG

Name: Lan Samantha Chang                                                                       
Born: 1965                                                                                     
                                                                                               
Lan Samantha Chang born 1965, is an American writer of novels and short                       
stories. Her works include Hunger, a novella plus four short stories, and                     
Inheritance, a novel.                                                                         
                                                                                               
She was born in Wisconsin, the daughter of Chinese parents who survived the                   
World War II Japanese occupation of China and later emigrated to the United                   
States. Chang has received fellowships from Stanford (the Stegner Fellowship)                 
and Princeton Universities. She has most recently served as the Briggs-Copeland               
Lecturer of Creative Writing at Harvard University. Chang received an M.F.A. (Master           
of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, an M.P.A. (Master               
of Public Administration) from Harvard University, and a B.A. in East Asian                   
Studies from Yale University. At Yale, she served as managing editor of the Yale               
Daily News.                                                                                   
                                                                                               
Chang is currently Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Director                 
of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop; she is the first female and Asian                   
American writer to serve as director of the Workshop.                                         
                                                                                               
The five stories in Hunger (1998) deal mainly with the position of Chinese in                 
America, though the last of them is set in pre-Communist Shanghai. Inheritance (2004)         
is the story of a wealthy but declining family in Republican China, beginning in               
1925 and extending through the period of the Japanese invasion and the post-war               
flight to Taiwan and then the USA.