How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays

Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art.

As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how lessons on the writing life 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 in this powerful work of queer literature, 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, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, the literary nonfiction in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.

• The Writing Craft: Go inside the mind of a writer as he grows from student to teacher, exploring the entangling of life, literature, and politics.
• A Queer Coming of Age: A candid and intimate memoir of reckoning with identity as a son, a lover, a friend, and a gay, Korean American man in modern America.
• Activism and the AIDS Crisis: Chronicles some of the most formative experiences of a generation, from the front lines of the AIDS crisis to the aftermath of 9/11 and the election of Donald Trump.
• On Identity and Inheritance: Examines the search for self through the eclectic jobs that supported his art―from Tarot-reading and bookselling to cater-waiting for William F. Buckley.

ALEXANDER CHEE is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the national bestseller The Queen of the Night. His essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel was named a best book of the year in 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time. In 2025, Kirkus Reviews named it one of the hundred best books of nonfiction of the 21st century. Chee is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction, The Whiting Award, The Guggenheim and The USA Artists’ Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.