How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

**From the author of *The Queen of the Night* , an essay collection exploring his education as a man, writer, and activist—and how we form our identities in life and in art.**

As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the  *New York Times* , and "brilliant" by the *Washington Post*. With  *How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,* his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.

*How to Write an Autobiographical Novel* is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he 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. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, *Edinburgh,* and the election of Donald Trump.

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry,  *How to Write an Autobiographical Novel*  asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.