Biography

Catherine Chung was born in Evanston, IL during a furious blizzard that dropped over 20 inches of snow on the ground and wreaked havoc all over Chicago. Writing has been her life-long passion, but as an undergraduate she indulged in a brief, one-sided affair with mathematics at the University of Chicago. Then she moved to Santa Monica where it was always sunny, and worked at a think tank by the sea. In her free time she scribbled away at stories and poems, until she was eventually accepted into the Creative Writing program at Cornell University.

There she was lucky enough to meet amazing teachers and friends, and she spent the following years teaching, working on her novel, and moving from place to place. She and her book were given shelter and encouragement at MacDowell, Jentel, Hedgebrook, SFAI, Camargo, The University of Leipzig, and Yaddo. Her brother, Heesoo Chung, also gave her a bed and fed her lots of ice cream during this time. Forgotten Country was published by Riverhead Books in March 2012.

Catherine is a Granta New Voice, and a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She currently lives in New York City.