Susan Choi - Biography

Susan Choi (born 1969) is an American novelist. Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana to a Korean father and the American daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. When she was nine years old, her parents divorced. She and her mother moved to Houston, Texas. Choi earned a B.A. in Literature from Yale University (1990) and an M.F.A. from Cornell University.

After receiving her graduate degree, she worked for The New Yorker as a fact checker.

Choi won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction and was a finalist of the Discover Great New Writers Award at Barnes & Noble for her first novel, The Foreign Student. In 2010, she won the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award.

With David Remnick, she edited an anthology of short fiction entitled Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. Choi's second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her newest novel is A Person of Interest, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2009.

Choi lives in Brooklyn, New York City with her husband Pete Wells, the editor of the dining section of The New York Times, and their two sons, Dexter and Elliot.

Awards and grants

• Asian American Literary Award for Fiction for The Foreign Student
• Steven Turner Award for The Foreign Student
• Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist for The Foreign Student
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient (2001)
• Pulitzer Prize finalist 2004 for American Woman
• New York Public Library Young Lions Award finalist 2004 for American Woman
• Guggenheim Fellow (2004).
• W. G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career

Books

• The Foreign Student (1998), ISBN 0-06-019149-X
• Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (2000), ISBN 0-375-50356-0 (ed. with David Remnick)
• American Woman (2003), ISBN 0-06-054221-7
• A Person of Interest (2008), ISBN 978-0-670-01846-8

External links

• Excerpt from Susan Choi's fiction in Guernica (guernicamag.com)
• Official homepage
• Goldsea.com - interview with Susan Choi (2003)
• New York Public Library Young Lions Award finalist 2004
• link to picture of Suan Choi