Catherine Chung


Catherine Chung is an American writer whose first novel, Forgotten Country, received an Honorable Mention for the 2013 PEN/Hemingway Award, and was an Indie Next Pick, in addition to being chosen for several best of lists including Booklist's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2012, and the San Francisco Chronicles and Bookpage's Best Books of 2012. She received a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, and was recognized in 2010 by Granta magazine as one of its "New Voices" of the year. Her second book is The Tenth Muse.

Early life and education

Chung was born in Evanston, Illinois, and has a brother. She grew up in New York, New Jersey and Michigan.
She graduated with a mathematics degree from the University of Chicago, and worked at the think tank the RAND Corporation before attending Cornell University to receive her MFA.

Career

Chung's critically acclaimed debut novel, Forgotten Country, was published in 2012 by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Press. She has also published short stories and essays in The New York Times, The Rumpus, and Granta, and was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize in Poetry.
She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Jentel, and received support for her writing from the Camargo Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation. She was a Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Adelphi University. She is a fiction editor at Guernica magazine. Chung is the recipient of a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a Granta New Voice.