Ava Chin, author portrait
© © Tommy Kha

Ava Chin

Ava Chin, a 5th generation New Yorker, is the author of the award-winning Mott Street, a recipient of the 2024 Best Book Award from the Chinese American Librarians Association, and Eating Wildly, which won the 2015 M.F.K. Fisher Book Award for excellence in food writing. Mott Street, an ALA Notable Book and one of People magazine’s top books by Asian American authors, was a Best Book of the year by TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Elle. Chin is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, NYFA, the NY Institute for the Humanities, AAWW, and MacDowell. She is Professor of Creative Nonfiction and head of the CUNY Graduate Center’s American Studies program. The Huffington Post named her one of "9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading."
Mott Street

Books

Mott Street

Register for the 2026 Penguin Random House First-Year Experience® Conference Author Events!

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 45th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 15-18, 2026 Seattle, Washington Hyatt Regency Seattle Click Here to RSVP A complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to attendees. Each event will also be followed by an author signing. Interested in hosting one of these authors at

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What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2025-26

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 284 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2025-26. We will continue to update this

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2026 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2026! 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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