Ava Chin: Dimensionalizing Paper People

Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (Penguin Press, 2023) where she shatters the silence that The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 imposed on the disenfranchised Chinese immigrant community. Her extensive research paired with her rich library of oral histories passed down through familial generations were woven together to create an American Library Association Notable Book and a Best Book of the year by TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Elle. She also wrote the award-winning Eating Wildly (Simon & Schuster, 2014), which won the 2015 M.F.K. Fisher Book Award for excellence in food writing. It's no wonder The Huffington Post named her one of "9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading."

Chin's writing has appeared in The New York Times (“Urban Forager”), the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Marie Claire, and Saveur, among many others. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), New York Institute for the Humanities, Asian American Writers’ Workshop and MacDowell. And as a former slam poet, she has performed on stages at Woodstock ‘94, the Whitney Museum, and the Knitting Factory.

Professor Chin holds a PhD from the University of Southern California, a MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from Queens College, CUNY. She is Professor of Creative Nonfiction and Journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is the head of the American Studies Certificate Program and she teaches nonfiction writing at the College of Staten Island. Chin lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

Author Website: https://avachin.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ava_chin/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ava-chin-45206b5/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Ava-Chin-Author-100065441441480/

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