Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Gish Jen (Lillian Jen) was born in Long Island, New York in 1955, a second-generation Chinese-American. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in English and later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Jen has written several novels, collection of short stories, and a volume of lectures. In addition, her stories have been published in many places including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, as well as in various anthologies.
Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and an International IMPAC Dublin Book Award, her work was also featured in a PBS American Masters special on the American novel, and is widely taught. Jen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and numerous other awards. In 2003, an American Academy of Arts and Letters jury comprised of John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Don DeLillo, and Joyce Carol Oates granted her a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award; Jen also delivered the Massey lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 2012. Her most recent book, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture and the Interdependent Self is based on those lectures.
She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and children.
Gish Jen's website
This bio was last updated on 09/05/2015. We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's a tough task. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date or inaccurate, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we can replace the old with the new.
The Love Wife is your third novel. How might this book
surprise readers of your previous novels, Typical American and Mona
in the Promised Land? What surprised you?
The Love Wife is not about the Chang family, for one thing.
Also this book is, I hate to say more middle-aged, but that's probably
the truth. I've lived through more, and it shows.
At the same time, what really surprised me about The Love Wife was,
paradoxically, how young I felt, writing it. In my non-writing
life, I felt tired and stressed and a shadow of my younger self in most every
respect. In my writing life, though, all of that seemed to fall away: This
novel wrote itself and wrote itself as if it did not realize its author got no
sleep and no exercise and could barely remember what year it was. I
could not have been more amazed and grateful.
The novel is told in the different voices of the Wong family. Why
did you decide to write the novel in this form?
The novel came to me this way–as if told by the various Wongs at a
very long family therapy session, only without the therapist, and with
license, it ...
Xuefei Jin, who writes under the pseudonym Ha Jin, was born in 1956 in Liaoning Province in northern China. His father was a military officer. In 1969, at only 14 years of age, Ha Jin joined the People's Liberation Army based... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Love Wife
Try:
A Free Life
by Ha Jin
Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. Other than a brief time (1963) spent in a small village in central Congo, she grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Love Wife
Try:
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
We recommend 9 similar authors
An eye-opening and riveting look at how how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.
About the book
Never Coming Back
by Alison McGhee
A moving exploration of growing up and growing old, and the ties that bind parents and children.
Reader Reviews
The Wisdom of Sundays
by Oprah Winfrey
Life-changing insights from super soul conversations.
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
