Jenny Zhang

Jenny Zhang (born 1983) is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States. She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags. From 2011 to 2014, Zhang wrote extensively for Rookie. Additionally, Zhang has worked as a freelance essayist for other publications. In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection, Sour Heart, was the first acquisition by Lena Dunham's Lenny imprint, Lenny Books, via Random House. Early life Zhang was born in Shanghai, China. When she was five years old, Zhang immigrated to New York City to join her father, who was studying linguistics at New York University, and mother, who had come to the United States after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Her father withdrew from the PhD program he was enrolled in, began to work as a teacher, and re-enrolled in school for computer programming, with the family eventually moving to Long Island where her father ran a computer repair business. She has a younger brother. In 2005, Zhang graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. In 2009, Zhang received a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Career After college, Zhang moved to San Francisco where she worked as a union organizer for Chinese home healthcare workers and as an organizer for the writing non-profit 826 Valencia which helps children and young adults learn how to write. Zhang spent a summer in Hungary teaching English as a second language.