Victoria Chang (born 1970) is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic. She has experimented with different styles of writing, including writing obituaries for parts of her life, including her parents and herself, in Obit, letters in Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, and a Japanese form known as waka[1] in The Trees Witness Everything. In all of her poems and books, Chang has several common themes: living as an Asian-American woman, depression, and dealing with loss and grief. She has also written two books for children.[2]
Victoria Chang was born in a Taiwanese-American family in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in the suburb of West Bloomfield.[3][4] Her parents were immigrants from Taiwan.[5] She graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Asian Studies, Harvard University with a M.A. in Asian Studies, and Stanford Business School with a M.B.A.[6] She also earned a M.F.A. in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, where she held a Holden Scholarship.
Career
Chang's first book, Circle (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. Her second poetry collection is Salvinia Molesta (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Her third book of poetry, The Boss was published by McSweeney's in 2013—it won a PEN Center USA literary award and a California Book Award. Another collection, Barbie Chang, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017.[7]
Her fifth book of poems, OBIT, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN Voelcker Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize and was a finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and long listed for the National Book Award. It was also named a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Best 100 Books of the Year, a TIME Magazine, NPR, Boston Globe, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
In 2021, she published Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, Milkweed Editions. The book was a TIME, Lithub, and NPR most anticipated book of 2021. It was named one of Electric Literature’s Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021.
Her sixth book of poems, The Trees Witness Everything, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2022. It was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker.
In 2024, Chang's collection of poems, With My Back to the World, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in Poetry.
She also writes picture books for children and middle grade novels, and her picture book, Is Mommy? published by Beach Lane Books (Simon & Schuster) in the fall of 2015, illustrated by Marla Frazee, was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her middle grade verse novel, LOVE, LOVE was published by Sterling Publishing in 2020.
Chang serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and as the Director of Poetry at Tech. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature in 2023, a Lannan Residency Fellowship in 2020, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2017, a Poetry Society of America Alice Fay di Castagnola Award in 2018, a Pushcart Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast,[8]Virginia Quarterly Review,[9]Slate, Ploughshares, and The Nation, and Tin House.[10]
OBIT was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award
OBIT won the PEN Voelcker Award
OBIT was long listed for a National Book Award
OBIT was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize
OBIT was named a New York Times 100 Best Books of the Year, a TIME Magazine Best 100 Books of the Year, NPR's Best Books of the Year, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, Boston Globe Best Books of the Year
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Obit is the fifth book of poems written by Victoria Chang.
References
↑ What Is a Waka? at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.
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