Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times “100 Best Books of the Century.” Pachinko was a New York Times bestseller and was developed into an 8-episode series for Apple TV+ that premiered in 2022. It has been published in over 35 languages.

Lee’s third novel American Hagwon will be published in September 2026.

As New York State Author Laureate (2025-2027), Lee received the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit. She is the 2024 recipient of The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Lee has received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. Her fiction has been translated into over 35 languages. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

Lee served as the editor of Best American Short Stories 2023. Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, and The Times of London. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She is at work on the novel, Marshall Plan, the fourth of the Diaspora Quartet, and writing Name Recognition, a memoir. Lee lives in Harlem with her family.