May-lee Chai is the author of eleven books, including her 2022 collection, Tomorrow in Shanghai & Other Stories. Her previous story collection, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, won the 2019 American Book Award. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her writing has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman (selected by Tayari Jones), Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, and recipient of an honorable mention for the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Book Awards. Her short prose has appeared widely, including in Seventeen, New England Review, Longreads, Paris Review Online, Los Angeles Times, Best Small Fictions, and cited as Notable in two editions of the Best American Essays anthology.
