Charles Yu

Charles Yu was born in 1976 in the United States to Taiwanese immigrant parents. He studied at UC Berkeley and earned a JD from UCLA School of Law before becoming a full-time writer. He has worked as a television writer for shows including HBO's Westworld and FX's Legion. Yu's debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) was a creative and critical success, and his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other publications. His third novel Interior Chinatown (2020), structured as a screenplay following a Chinese American actor trapped in the role of 'Background Oriental Male,' won the National Book Award for Fiction. A metafictional satire on race, identity, and Hollywood stereotyping, it was adapted into a Hulu television series in 2024.