How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Alexander Chee
<p>Named a Best Book by: <em>Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, The A.V. Club,</em> <em>Book Riot<em>, </em>PopSugar</em>, <em>The Rumpus</em>, <em>My Republica</em>, <em>Paste</em>, *Bitch,Bustle<em>, </em>Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Review of Books, The Coil,<em> iBooks, and </em>Publishers Weekly*</p><p>From the author of <em>The Queen of the Night</em>, an essay collection exploring his education as a man, writer, and activist—and how we form our identities in life and in art.**</p><p>As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the <em>Washington Post</em>. With <em>How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,</em> his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.<br /><br /><em>How to Write an Autobiographical Novel</em> is the author’s manifesto on 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 essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons 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 the nation’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, <em>Edinburgh,</em> and the election of Donald Trump.<br /><br />By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, <em>How to Write an Autobiographical Novel</em> asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.</p>