HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL by Alexander Chee

HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL is a collection of personal essays by novelist Alexander Chee. Within this book, Chee “grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend.” These essays cover experiences as broad as the AIDS crisis and 9/11, to quietly growing roses in his Brooklyn backyard.

The writing is astonishingly beautiful—simple yet lush, controlled yet deeply vulnerable. Named a best book by everyone from The Paris Review to Buzzfeed to Christian Science Monitor, HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL is perhaps the most compelling and beautiful collection of essays I have ever read. 

—Recommended by Tess