Charles Yu, author portrait
© Tina Chiou

Charles Yu

CHARLES YU is the author of four books, including Interior Chinatown (the winner of the 2020 National Book Award for fiction), and the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (a New York Times Notable Book and a Time magazine best book of the year). He received the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the HBO series, Westworld. He has also written for shows on FX, AMC, and HBO. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications. Together with TaiwaneseAmerican.org, he established the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Writing Prizes, in honor of his parents.

Interior Chinatown

Books

Interior Chinatown

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2026–27

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities across the country have announced their Common Reading books for the 2026–27 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 250 programs and their title selections, detailed below. We will continue to update this listing to provide the most comprehensive record of programs available anywhere

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2027 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2027! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about the environment, current events, history, public health, science, social justice, student success, and technology, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through

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Videos from the 2026 First-Year Experience® Conference are now available

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2026 First-Year Experience® Conference. Whether you weren’t able to join us at the conference or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Author Breakfast Monday, February 17th, 7:15 – 8:45 am PST   This

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NEA Big Read Introduces New Theme “Where We Live.” Applications Now Open.

In case you missed it, in October the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced new guidelines for its NEA Big Read initiative and the 2024-2025 theme “Where We Live” alongside 50 books available for selection, culled from its archive. Applications are now open for grants to support NEA Big Read projects between September 2024

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