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K-Ming Chang

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K-Ming Chang
Born1998 (age 25–26)
Notable workBestiary
AwardsLambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction (2023)
Websitekmingchang.com

K-Ming Chang (born 1998) is an American novelist and poet. She is the author of the novel Bestiary (2020). Gods of Want won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.[1][2] In 2021, Bestiary was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Personal life

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K-Ming Chang was born in 1998, the year of the tiger, and grew up in California.[3][4] In elementary school, she wrote a story about a girl who turns into a tiger; she later recalled it, humorously, as a "really terrible" story.[citation needed] This story contained the seeds of her eventual first novel, Bestiary.[5] Chang currently lives in New York.[4]

Writing

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Chang is the Micro editor at The Offing magazine.[6]

Past Lives, Future Bodies (2018)

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Chang published Past Lives, Future Bodies in 2018 with Black Lawrence Press.[7][8] The chapbook takes up themes of matrilineality contrasted with "volatile masculinity", writes Luiza Flynn-Goodlett.[9] In her review, Flynn-Goodlett praised the "magic conjured in this collection—lyric intensity coupled with sharp political intellect", saying "Chang emerges as an urgent, sumptuous voice, a poet of numerous gifts and intellectual dexterity".[9] Several critics remark on Chang’s use of line breaks;[10] in The Rumpus, torrin a. greathouse says they "become a blade, a letter's crease, a hinge opening the next line like a room. Her chapbook is a master class in the potential of enjambment, imbuing each break with the wonder of and trepidation of the unknown."[11]

Bestiary (2020)

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Chang published her debut novel Bestiary in 2020.[12][5] She wrote it in her sophomore year in college while she was at home on summer break, taking summer courses on Asian American history. In an Electric Literature interview, Chang said she "actually wrote Bestiary as a book of essays and was considering it as nonfiction when I was first drafting it."[13] She sold Bestiary, as a novel, to One World, Chris Jackson's imprint at Random House, while still an undergraduate.[4] Another poetry collection was also part of the book deal.[14]

The novel tells the story of three generations of women, Daughter, Mother and Grandmother, who move from Taiwan to Arkansas.[15] After hearing Mother tell the folktale of Hu Gu Po, a tiger spirit who eats children to try to become human, Daughter grows a tiger tail and develops powers she doesn't understand or know how to use.[5] In a review for The New York Times, Amil Niazi contrasts Bestiary with immigrant literature organized around nostalgia and other sentimentality: instead, Bestiary is "full of magic realism that reaches down your throat, grabs hold of your guts and forces a slow reckoning with what it means to be a foreigner, a native, a mother, a daughter — and all the things in between."[16] In a review for the Star Tribune, May-Lee Chai says Chang’s novel “reinvents the genres of immigrant novel, queer coming-of-age story, and mother-and-daughter tale.”[17]

Bone House (2021)

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In 2021, Chang's micro-chapbook Bone House was released by Bull City Press as part of their Inch series.[18] The collection functions as a queer Taiwanese-American retelling of Wuthering Heights, in which an unnamed narrator moves into a butcher's mansion "with a life of its own."[19]

Gods of Want (2022)

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Chang published her short story collection, entitled Gods of Want, with One World in 2022.[20] In an Electric Literature interview, Chang said her desire to release a collection came from her "thinking about story collections as a neighborhood and a community, and the short story form presenting that possibility of containing many collective voices."[13] It went on to win the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and it was also put on the New York Times 100 Notable Books list for 2022.[1][2][21] Alexandra Kleeman, writing for The New York Times, remarked of Chang's stories: "Each one is possessed of a powerful hunger, a drive to metabolize the recognizable features of a familiar world and transform them into something wilder, and achingly alive."[22]

Organ Meats (2023)

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In 2023, Chang published the novel Organ Meats with One World.[23] The novel follows two best friends who, upon encountering the stray dogs in their neighborhood, feel a strong yet consequential desire to become dogs.[24]

In an Electric Literature interview, Chang explained that her novels Bestiary, Gods of Want, and Organ Meats compose a "mythic triptych": "I think of the three books almost like doors in a hallway. I realized they were a trio not just aesthetically or thematically, but in the way that they were oriented. The narrators are people who have the future at their back and are looking into the past in a very speculative way."[13]

Cecelia (2024)

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Chang published the novella Cecelia in 2024 with Coffee House Press.[25] A few weeks before its May 21 release, it was excerpted in Electric Literature and recommended by Brynne Rebele-Henry, who lauded her recent work as "balancing desire with the abject, conveying the intensity of first love without the cliché."[26] The book follows two girls who, as adults, reencounter one another for the first time since childhood in a chiropractor's office. An early excerpt that would later go on to be Cecelia was first published in Hyphen in 2020.[27]

Other work

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Chang has published poetry in journals like the Adroit Journal and Muzzle Magazine.[28][29] Her poetry has also been featured in Best New Poets 2018 and the 2019 Pushcart anthology.[30][31]

Chang has published a number of short stories, including "Haiyang" was published in Issue 41 of the Berkeley Fiction Review, as well as others in Joyland, Electric Literature, and the Asian American Writers' Workshop's The Margins.[32][33][34][35] Her short story, "Nine-Headed Birds 九头鸟", originally published in VIDA Review, was selected by Matthew Salesses for the 2020 Best of the Net anthology.[36]

Honors

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In 2018, Chang was named a Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry by The Adroit Journal.[37] She has also been a Kundiman Fellow.[38] In 2019, Chang was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the lesbian poetry category for her collection Past Lives, Future Bodies.[39] In 2020, she was awarded the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" prize (selected by previous honoree Justin Torres).[40] In 2021, her novel Bestiary was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction[41] and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.[42]

References

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  1. ^ a b "2023 Winners". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 2023-06-10.
  2. ^ a b Schaub, Michael (2023-06-12). "2023 Lambda Literary Award Winners Are Revealed". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
  3. ^ "K-Ming Chang". National Book Foundation. Archived from the original on 2021-01-23. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
  4. ^ a b c Chan, Vanessa (2020-09-30). "Completely Embodied: Talking with K-Ming Chang". The Rumpus. Archived from the original on 2020-12-18. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  5. ^ a b c Khan, Saira (2020-10-01). "K-Ming Chang's "Bestiary": A Debut Novel in Which Mythology Is Real and a Girl Turns Into a Tiger". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on 2020-11-16. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  6. ^ "K-Ming Chang". The Offing. Archived from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  7. ^ Womer, Brenna (2019-03-08). "K-Ming Chang's "Past Lives, Future Bodies" reviewed by Brenna Womer". Tarpaulin Sky Magazine. Archived from the original on 2020-10-24. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  8. ^ "Review of Past Lives, Future Bodies by K-Ming Chang". Ember Chasm Review. 2020-07-02. Archived from the original on 2020-12-19. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  9. ^ a b Flynn-Goodlett, Luiza (8 April 2019). "I Identify Sexually as Alive: A Review of K-Ming Chang's 'Past Lives, Future Bodies'". The Adroit Journal. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  10. ^ Lau, Travis Chi Wing. "Past Lives Future Bodies". Up the Staircase Quarterly. Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  11. ^ Greathouse, Torrin A. (2018-11-02). "A Thin-Bladed Grace: K-Ming Chang's Past Lives, Future Bodies". The Rumpus. Archived from the original on 2020-12-18. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  12. ^ Patrick, Bethann (2020-10-01). "Review: 'Bestiary,' an immigrant tale that puts the (filthy, brutal) realism in magical realism". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  13. ^ a b c Lit, Intern Electric (2024-05-03). "K-Ming Chang Invites Us to Remake the Rules of the World". Electric Literature. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  14. ^ Varno, David (July 10, 2020). "Writers to Watch Fall 2020". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on 2021-01-24. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  15. ^ Masad, Ilana (September 30, 2020). "This 'Bestiary' Lives In A Family's Multigenerational Stories". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2021-01-28. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  16. ^ Niazi, Amil (2020-09-29). "'Bestiary' Offers a Compendium of Creatures, and Generations". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2021-01-17. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  17. ^ Chai, May-Lee (October 23, 2020). "Review: 'Bestiary,' by K-Ming Chang". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on 2020-12-31. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
  18. ^ "Bone House". Bull City Press. 16 February 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-11-16. Retrieved 2021-11-15.
  19. ^ "K-Ming Chang". K-Ming Chang. Archived from the original on 2021-11-16. Retrieved 2021-11-15.
  20. ^ "Gods of Want". K-Ming Chang. Archived from the original on 2022-01-24. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
  21. ^ Staff, The New York Times Books (2022-11-22). "100 Notable Books of 2022". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  22. ^ Kleeman, Alexandra (2022-07-12). "Metabolizing the World Into Something Wild and Achingly Alive". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  23. ^ "Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang: 9780593447345 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  24. ^ "K-Ming Chang's 'Organ Meats' Is Her Most Ambitious and Enchanting Book Yet". Shondaland. 2023-10-25. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  25. ^ "Cecilia". Coffee House Press. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  26. ^ Sidhu, Preety (2024-05-13). "I Aspire to Urinate as Powerfully as My Boss". Electric Literature. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  27. ^ "DECEMBER FICTION: CECILIA BY K-MING CHANG". Hyphen. 2020-12-21. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  28. ^ "Issue Twenty-Five: K-Ming Chang | The Adroit Journal - The Adroit Journal". 2018-10-23. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  29. ^ "Kristin Chang". MUZZLE MAGAZINE. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  30. ^ "K-Ming Chang". Literary Hub. Archived from the original on 2020-12-04. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
  31. ^ "K-Ming Chang". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  32. ^ "Haiyang". 22 September 2021.
  33. ^ "Family: Orchid | JOYLAND". 2020-08-27. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  34. ^ Juarez, Alex (2022-07-06). "Never Marry a Man with a Human Mother". Electric Literature. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  35. ^ "Consequences of Water". Asian American Writers' Workshop. 2019-12-09. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  36. ^ "Fiction – Best of the Net". Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  37. ^ Laberge, Peter (2018-03-22). "Announcing The Adroit Journal's 2018 Djanikian Scholars!". The Adroit Journal. Archived from the original on 2020-11-29. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  38. ^ Eaker, Alex (September 12, 2020). "Bestiary Poetically Raises a Coming-of-Age Tale to the Level of Myth". Slant Magazine. Archived from the original on 2021-02-06. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
  39. ^ "The 2019 Lambda Literary Award Finalists Are Hereby Announced by Harriet Staff". Poetry Foundation. 2021-02-03. Archived from the original on 2021-02-04. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  40. ^ "The National Book Foundation Announces 2020 5 Under 35 Honorees". National Book Foundation. 2020-09-21. Archived from the original on 2021-01-16. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  41. ^ Liaw, Amanda (February 2, 2021). "Announcing the longlist for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction". The PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Archived from the original on 2021-02-04. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
  42. ^ "2020 First Novel Prize: The Long List". The Center for Fiction. Archived from the original on 2021-02-27. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
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