Leonard Chang

Leonard Chang is a Korean American writer of short stories and novels, as well as a screenwriter and television writer who is currently a writer/producer for FX's Snowfall.

Born in New York City, Chang grew up on Long Island and attended the public schools of Merrick. After graduating high school, Chang studied Philosophy at Dartmouth College, interned with the Peace Corps in Kingston, Jamaica, and continued his Philosophy studies at Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors. After college, Chang attended the Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) Graduate Creative Writing program at the University of California at Irvine.

Chang's short stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including The Crescent Review, Confluence, The Literary Review, and Prairie Schooner.

His first novel was The Fruit 'N Food (1996), winner of the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction, a story about a loner who finds employment in a New York grocery; major themes involve race relations and violence. His other novels include Dispatches from the Cold (1998), which won the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Literature.

His novel Over The Shoulder (2001), a mystery/noir, forms the first book in a trilogy about his Korean American private-eye protagonist, Allen Choice. Other novels in the "Choice" trilogy are: Underkill (2003) and Fade To Clear (2004) (a USA Today Summer Reading Pick and a finalist for the Shamus Award).

His 2009 novel, entitled Crossings brings together many of the themes and issues of his previous work, and centers around a love story between recent Korean immigrants, while tackling the harsh circumstances of illegal immigration and human trafficking.

Triplines was published in 2014 and is a highly autobiographical novel about his tumultuous childhood on Long Island.

A new novel, entitled The Lockpicker, is scheduled for publication in 2017.

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