Winner of the James Alan McPherson Award judged by Gish Jen, Beauty is about Amy Wong, an up-and-coming designer in the New York Fashion industry. She’s young, talented, beautiful. She should have it all—so why doesn’t she? Amy appreciates her sexuality, questions the boundaries she faces as an Asian American woman, and experiences life’s loves and losses.

"I loved the way how naturally the many small moments accumulated into a life, and how fashion -- and especially shoes – came to seem integral to the protagonist's past, ambitions, and love."

– Gish Jen, author of Who's Irish? and winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship

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Christina Chiu is the grand-prize winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel, Beauty. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Troublemaker was alternate selection for BOMC and QPB, a nominee for a BOMC First Fiction Award, and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. 

Chiu has published in magazines and anthologies, including Tin House, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, World Wide Writers, The MacGuffin, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Acorn, Grandmothers: Granddaughters Remember, and Not the Only One. Her stories have won awards and honorable mention in literary contests such as Playboy, Glimmer Train, New Millennium, New York Stories, World Wide Writers, Explorations, and El Dorado Writers’ Guild.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee's novel, The Evening Hero, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster, her young adult novel, Finding My Voice, with Soho Press. Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Nation, and the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has been a judge for the National Book Awards and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. Lee is a founder and former board president of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and teaches fiction at Columbia where she is Writer in Residence.

Christina Chiu on Beauty with Marie Myung-Ok Lee