Fellowship / Fellows

Gish Jen

  • 2001–2002
  • Fiction & Poetry
  • Independent Writer

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Gish Jen’s stories and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Republic, among other publications, and have been anthologized in numerous textbooks and collections. Her stories were included in Houghton Mifflin’s series, The Best American Short Stories of 1988 and of 1995 and The Best American Short Stories of the Century, which was edited by John Updike. Jen is the author of two widely taught novels, Typical American (reprint edition, Plume, 1992) and Mona in the Promised Land (reprint edition, Vintage Books, 1997), both of which were partly written while in residence at Radcliffe. Typical American, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, will be featured on the PBS Masterworks program on the American novel, scheduled to air in late 2002. Mona in the Promised Land was named one of the ten best books of 1995 by The Los Angeles Times. Jen’s most recent book is Who’s Irish? (Knopf, 2000), a collection of short stories. All three of her books were New York Times “Notable Books of the Year.”

As a Radcliffe writer-in-residence, Jen will work on a new novel about a Chinese American family with adopted and biological children.

After graduating from Radcliffe College with a BA in English, Jen earned an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation.

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