Charles Yu

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American writer (born 1976)

title: "Charles Yu" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1976-births", "living-people", "21st-century-american-novelists", "american-male-novelists", "columbia-law-school-alumni", "uc-berkeley-college-of-letters-and-science-alumni", "american-writers-of-taiwanese-descent", "american-male-short-story-writers", "21st-century-american-male-writers", "national-book-award-winners", "american-people-of-taiwanese-descent"] description: "American writer (born 1976)" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Yu" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American writer (born 1976) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer "]

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imageCharles Yu at AWP 2025 03 (cropped).jpg
nameCharles Yu

| | caption | Yu at AWP 2025 | | birth_name | Charles Chowkai Yu | | birth_date | | | birth_place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. | | occupation | {{flatlist| | | genre | novel, literary fiction, science fiction, experimental fiction, non-fiction | | notableworks | How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) Interior Chinatown (2020) | | awards | National Book Award for Fiction (2020) (for Interior Chinatown) Robert Olen Butler Prize Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award | | website | | | module | | | education | University of California, Berkeley (BS) Columbia University (JD) | ::

| image = Charles Yu at AWP 2025 03 (cropped).jpg | image_size = | name = Charles Yu

| caption = Yu at AWP 2025 | pseudonym = | birth_name = Charles Chowkai Yu | birth_date = | birth_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = {{flatlist|

Charles Chowkai Yu (; born January 3, 1976) is an American writer and lawyer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction. Yu created a television adaptation of Interior Chinatown which premiered in 2024.

Personal life

Yu was raised in a Taiwanese American family. His parents had emigrated to the United States from Taiwan. He mentioned that besides drawing from his own life in writing Interior Chinatown, he also knew that he wanted to write about this certain experience of his parents as immigrants, during which time his kids were also growing up.

Yu graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997, majoring and receiving a Bachelor of Arts in molecular and cellular biology and a minor in creative writing, where he "wrote poetry, not fiction" and also "took several poetry workshops with people like Thom Gunn and Ishmael Reed".

He obtained his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. He has worked as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell, as a corporate attorney in Bryan Cave, became the Director of Business Affairs at Digital Domain and worked as an associate general counsel at Belkin International, before finally becoming a full-time fiction and TV writer.

He lives near Irvine, California with his wife, Michelle Jue and their two children, Sophia and Dylan. His brother is the actor and TV writer Kelvin Yu.

Writing

In 2007, Yu was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of its "5 Under 35", a program which highlights the work of the next generation of fiction writers by asking five previous National Book Award fiction Winners and Finalists to select one fiction writer under the age of 35 whose work they find particularly promising and exciting. Yu was selected for the honor by Richard Powers.

In 2021, Yu established the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes in collaboration with TaiwaneseAmerican.org.

Short stories

His fiction was cited for special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXVIII, specifically "Problems for Self-Study" published in the Harvard Review.

Yu also received the 2004 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award from the Mid-American Review for his story, "Third Class Superhero".

As for editing anthologies, Yu served as the Guest Editor for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 from The Best American Series and the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Novels

''How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe''

Main article: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

His first novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, was published and released in 2010 and was ranked that year's second-best science fiction novel by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas — and a runner up for the Campbell Memorial Award. The novel was further listed in Time magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010, The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010, and was one of Amazon.com's Top 10 SF/F Books for 2010.

''Interior Chinatown''

Main article: Interior Chinatown

In 2020, Yu released his second novel, Interior Chinatown, which uses the screenplay format to tell the tale of Willis Wu, the "Generic Asian Man" who is stuck playing "Background Oriental Male" and occasionally "Delivery Guy" in the fictional police procedural Black and White but who longs to be "Kung Fu Guy" on screens worldwide. On January 27, 2020, Yu appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to discuss the book, as well as the lack of on-screen representation for Asian Americans and the Asian American "model minority myth". Yu further appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, January 25, 2020, and on the Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour with Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf on February 3, 2020 to further discuss the novel.

Interior Chinatown won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction made the longlist of the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2020 Prix Médicis étranger.

In an interview with Timothy Tau for Hyphen, Yu remarked that his influences for the novel included Paul Beatty's Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Sellout as well as the "cyclical structure" of the film Groundhog Day.

Main article: Interior Chinatown (TV series)

In October 2020, Hulu announced that they would be adapting the novel into a TV series. In 2022, details emerged that Taika Waititi would be an executive producer, Jimmy O. Yang would be starring as Willis Wu, and that Yu would be the showrunner. The ten-episode series premiered on Hulu on November 19, 2024.

Screenplays and TV writing

In 2016, Yu was a story editor for ten episodes of the first season of the 2016 HBO series Westworld, and co-wrote the episode "Trace Decay". For his work on the show, he received two Writers Guild of America Award nominations in 2017: Drama Series and New Series. In 2023, Taika Waititi announced Yu was working on the screenplay for his planned adaptation of Akira.

Other writing

Yu's non-fiction, essays, book reviews, journalism and other writing have also appeared online and in print in The Atlantic ( "The Pre-pandemic Universe Was the Fiction"), Slate (various reviews and articles on video games such as L.A. Noire and Portal 2), The Wall Street Journal ("Novelist Charles Yu on St. George California Reserve Agricole Rum"), Time ("What It's Like to Never Ever See Yourself on TV"), The Offing ("Thirteen Ways of Looking at 45" about the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump), The New York Times Style Magazine ("George R. R. Martin, Fantasy's Reigning King"), McSweeney's Internet Tendency ("What Kind of World Is This?"), The Morning News ("Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar", a review) and Polygon ("What future artificial intelligence will think of our puny human video games").

He is interviewed by and also interviews Lev Grossman in The Believer and comments on the work of Philip Roth (stating that he has "read more books by Roth than probably any other contemporary writer"), Don DeLillo, and Jonathan Lethem in installments of the "Influenced by" series published by Jaime Clarke in The Believer as well.

He has also written reviews in The New York Times Book Review of books (novels and short story collections) from Neal Stephenson, Joe Hill, Jasper Fforde and John Wray.

Awards and accolades

Bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

  • Third Class Superhero (2006, Harvest Books )
    • "Third-Class Hero" originally appearing as "Class Three Superhero" in Mid-American Review, Vol. XXV, No. 2
    • "My Last Days As Me" originally appearing in Sou'wester
    • "Problems for Self-Study" originally appearing in Harvard Review, Issue No. 23 (Fall 2002) (re-published at Harvard Review Online on April 18, 2011)
      • Yu's first published story
  • Sorry Please Thank You: Stories (2012, Pantheon Books, Random House. )

Uncollected short stories

  • "Systems", The New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2020
  • "Bounty", Xprize ANA "Avatars.Inc" Anthology (eBook and also online), March 2020
  • "The Future of Work: Placebo", Wired, December 17, 2018
  • "America, The Ride", Lightspeed, November 2018, Issue 102 (anthologized in Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, edited by Hugh Howey, Gary Whitta & Christie Yant (Broad Reach Publishing 2018))
  • "NPC", Lightspeed, September 2018, Issue 100 (anthologized in Press Start to Play, edited by Daniel H. Wilson & John Joseph Adams (Vintage Books 2015))
  • "Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger", Lightspeed, April 2017, Issue 83 (anthologized in Dead Man's Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West, edited by John Joseph Adams (Titan Books, 2014))
  • "Subtext®: It Knows What You're Thinking Stop Thinking", Wired, December 13, 2016
  • "Fable", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016, Fiction (May 30, 2016 Issue)
  • "Re: re: Microwave in the break room doing weird things to fabric of spacetime", Motherboard, November 12, 2015

Non-fiction

Essays

  • "The Pre-pandemic Universe Was the Fiction", The Atlantic, April 15, 2020
  • "What It's Like to Never See Yourself on TV", TIME, January 21, 2020
  • "George R. R. Martin, Fantasy's Reigning King", The New York Times Style Magazine, October 15, 2018
  • "What Kind of World Is This?", McSweeney's Internet Tendency, September 7, 2018
  • "What future artificial intelligence will think of our puny human video games", Polygon, January 9, 2018
  • "Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar", The Morning News
  • "Thirteen Ways of Looking at 45", The Offing, May 2, 2017
  • "Novelist Charles Yu on St. George California Reserve Agricole Rum", The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2014
  • "Gaming Club 2011: I have seen the future, and it is full of noobs like me.", Slate, December 15, 2011
  • "L.A. Noire: The characters in the most realistic video games are still basically puppets.", Slate, December 14, 2011
  • "Portal 2: How playing a video game is like writing fiction.", Slate, December 13, 2011

Book reviews

  • "Short Stories From Joe Hill, Spiked With Mayhem and Evil", NYT Book Review, October 1, 2019
  • "Neal Stephenson's New Novel — Part Tech, Part Fantasy — Dazzles", NYT Book Review, June 14, 2019
  • "A Brilliantly Funny and Slightly Bonkers New Novel From Jasper Fforde", NYT Book Review, February 28, 2019
  • "‘The Lost Time Accidents,’ by John Wray", NYT Book Review, February 21, 2016
  • "‘Seveneves,’ by Neal Stephenson", NYT Book Review, May 31, 2015

Teleplays

References

References

  1. "5 Under 35 2007".
  2. Alter, Alexandra. (2020-11-19). "Charles Yu Wins National Book Award for 'Interior Chinatown'". The New York Times.
  3. London, Rob. (July 10, 2024). "Jimmy O. Yang and Chloe Bennet Are Trapped in a Procedural in First 'Interior Chinatown' Images".
  4. Ansari, Aleenah. (2022-02-08). "Charles Yu on identity, representation and what it means to be Asian American".
  5. "Alumni Profile: Charles Yu {{!}} English".
  6. (2013-05-06). "Fashionable Nonsense and a Better Brain: Part One of an Interview with Charles Yu".
  7. Birnbaum, Robert. (November 2012). "Charles Yu".
  8. Charles Yu, LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesyu
  9. (2020-01-28). "Ten Questions for Charles Yu".
  10. (2017-09-20). "Kelvin Yu wins an Emmy for work on animated TV series - Taipei Times".
  11. Locus Magazine. (2021-02-22). "Charles Yu Establishes Taiwanese American Creative Writing Prize".
  12. (2021-02-25). "National Book Award winner Charles Yu discusses his new prize for Taiwanese American writers".
  13. Henderson, Bill. (2004). "Pushcart Prize XXVIII, 2004: Best of the Small Presses". Pushcart Press.
  14. "Charles Yu {{!}} Penguin Random House".
  15. "Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 – John Joseph Adams".
  16. (2011-12-02). "Chris Columbus' Production Company Acquires Sci-Fi Novel (Exclusive)".
  17. [[Charlie Jane Anders]], Will Hollywood sentimentalize Charles Yu's ''How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe''?, io9, December 2, 2011, http://io9.com/how-to-live-safely-in-a-science-fictional-universe/ {{Webarchive. link. (October 19, 2020)
  18. Carolyn Kellog, The Washington Post, Charles Yu's ‘Interior Chinatown’ brilliantly skewers Hollywood typecasting, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/charles-yus-interior-chinatown-brilliantly-skewers-hollywood-typecasting/2020/01/27/4d04be48-3711-11ea-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html
  19. (January 27, 2020). "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah – Charles Yu – Tackling On-Screen Asian Representation With "Interior Chinatown" – Extended Interview". Comedy Partners.
  20. "'Interior Chinatown' Puts That Guy In The Background Front And Center". NPR.org.
  21. (2020-02-03). "Los Angeles Review of Books".
  22. (October 6, 2020). "2020 National Book Awards Finalists Announced".
  23. JCARMICHAEL. (2020-10-18). "2021 Winners".
  24. "Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu: 9780307948472 {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books".
  25. Timothy Tau, INTERIOR CHINATOWN WINS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD: Q&A with Charles Yu, Hyphen Magazine, https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2020/11/interior-chinatown-wins-national-book-award
  26. Thorne, Will. (October 15, 2020). "Hulu Adapting Charles Yu Novel 'Interior Chinatown' for Television (EXCLUSIVE)".
  27. Bell, BreAnna. (October 13, 2022). "Hulu Orders 'Interior Chinatown' to Series With Jimmy O. Yang to Star, Taika Waititi to Direct".
  28. "2017 Writers Guild Awards Television, New Media, News, Radio, & Promotional Writing Nominations Announced".
  29. (14 November 2023). "Taika Waititi Confirms He's Not Directing 'Thor 5' — But Chris Hemsworth is in Talks for Return". BDG Media, Inc..
  30. admin_bm. (2015-07-01). "Conversation from the Shadow Lands. An Interview with Charles Yu".
  31. Entire Collection of all "Influenced By" Believer posts, https://www.newtonvillebooks.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/BELIEVER.pdf
  32. "INFLUENCED BY".
  33. Jaime Clarke, Believer Magazine, L, Influenced by (where Yu discusses Jonathan Lethem), https://jameson-zimmer.squarespace.com/post/2015/02/03/influenced-by-9
  34. Jaime Clarke, Believer Magazine, R, Influenced by (where Yu discusses Philip Roth and states "I've read more books by Roth than probably any other contemporary writer"), https://jameson-zimmer.squarespace.com/post?offset=1423520640000
  35. Yu, Charles. (2019-06-14). "Neal Stephenson's New Novel — Part Tech, Part Fantasy — Dazzles". The New York Times.
  36. Yu, Charles. (2015-05-27). "'Seveneves,' by Neal Stephenson". The New York Times.
  37. Yu, Charles. (2019-10-01). "Short Stories From Joe Hill, Spiked With Mayhem and Evil". The New York Times.
  38. Yu, Charles. (2019-02-28). "A Brilliantly Funny and Slightly Bonkers New Novel From Jasper Fforde". The New York Times.
  39. Yu, Charles. (2016-02-19). "'The Lost Time Accidents,' by John Wray". The New York Times.
  40. [http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/campbell.htm "The John W. Campbell Memorial Award"] {{Webarchive. link. (December 29, 2012 Updated 11 July 2011. Retrieved 2012-04-25.)
  41. "Book Marks reviews of Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu".
  42. "Volume XXV, No. 2 – Mid-American Review".
  43. Noble, Barnes &. "The 2004 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories{{!}}Paperback".
  44. "Charles Yu – Harvard Review".
  45. "10 Questions for Charles Yu {{!}} Mass Review".

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1976-birthsliving-people21st-century-american-novelistsamerican-male-novelistscolumbia-law-school-alumniuc-berkeley-college-of-letters-and-science-alumniamerican-writers-of-taiwanese-descentamerican-male-short-story-writers21st-century-american-male-writersnational-book-award-winnersamerican-people-of-taiwanese-descent