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How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
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Description
Shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
Named a Best Book of 2018 by TIME, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Paste, Bitch, Bustle, The Chicago Review of Books and iBooks
As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as 'masterful' by Roxane Gay, 'incendiary' by the New York Times, and 'brilliant' by the Washington Post. With How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his first collection of nonfiction, he secures his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's exploration of the entangling of life, literature and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these interconnected essays he constructs a self, growing from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckoning with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and America's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing – Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley – the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.
By turns commanding, heartbreaking and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.
Product details
| Published | 17 Dec 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Audiobook |
| Duration | 8 hours and 28 minutes |
| ISBN | 9781037221286 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Chee's insights about writing, love and activism are hard-won, honest and incredibly wise
Curtis Sittenfeld, Guardian Summer Reads
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Pulses with urgency ... Chee has written a moving and personal tribute to impermanence, a wise and transgressive meditation on a life lived both because of and in spite of America, a place where, he writes, “you are allowed to speak the truth as long as nothing changes”
New York Times Book Review
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These essays feel like a life's wisdom – its hurts, joys and redemptions – salvaged from a great fire ... This book makes me feel possible
Ocean Vuong
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Alexander Chee sifted through tales from his past to present golden insights into the way art can shape a life ... a singular and sincere writer of both fiction and nonfiction
TIME 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
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I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today
Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
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Urgent and insightful
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Guardian Summer Reads

























