MEET ALEXANDER CHEE
“Teaching from your own life experience always asks you to articulate something you may not even know you knew… Mentorship is different, more specific. It often involves problems we can solve together, and a more collaborative approach to thinking about this work.”
Alexander Chee, courtesy of the artist
Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays. He was guest-editor for The Best American Essays of 2022. He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Learn more here.
Work
"The Autobiography Of My Novel," The Sewanee Review
"Future Queer," New Republic
"The Rosary," The New Yorker
mentor profile
Queer|Art|Mentorship will be accepting applications from emerging artists across the country. Are you open to working with someone remotely, or would you prefer they are based in the same city as you?
“Either.”
What interests you about mentoring?
“Teaching from your own life experience always asks you to articulate something you may not even know you knew. I find that endlessly interesting. Mentorship is different, more specific. It often involves problems we can solve together, and a more collaborative approach to thinking about this work.”
Given your experience and interests, what kind of emerging artist do you feel best positioned to support?
“Anyone working up through their second book.”
As a mentor, what would you like to offer an emerging artist? What would you like to receive?
“I don't want to lay any expectations on it, other than to hope that we might become friends.”
Have you had mentors of your own? Who have they been?
“Yes, they include Kit Reed, Dale Peck, Annie Dillard, and Nami Mun.”