Min Jin Lee

About Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee went to Yale College where she was awarded both the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. She then attended law school at Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer for several years in New York prior to writing full time.

She has received the NYFA Fellowship for Fiction, the Peden Prize from The Missouri Review for Best Story, and the Narrative Prize for New and Emerging Writer. Her fiction has been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her writings about books, travel and food have appeared in CONDE NAST TRAVELER, THE TIMES of London, VOGUE (US), TRAVEL + LEISURE (SEA), THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and FOOD & WINE. A publication is forthcoming in GOURMET. Her personal essays have been anthologized in TO BE REAL, BREEDER, THE MARK TWAIN ANTHOLOGY: Great Writers on His Life and Works, and ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY. She is serving her third season as a Morning Forum columnist of the CHOSUN ILBO. Lee has lectured about writing and literature at various institutions including Columbia, Loyola Marymount University, Stanford, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), University of Connecticut, Hamilton College, Yale University, Ewha University, Waseda University, the American School in Japan, World Women’s Forum, the Tokyo American Center of the U.S. Embassy and the Asia Society in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong.

Her debut novel FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES was a No. 1 Book Sense Pick, a NEW YORK TIMES Editor’s Choice, a WALL STREET JOURNAL Juggle Book Club selection, and a national bestseller; it was a Top 10 Novels of the Year for THE TIMES of London,  NPR’s FRESH AIR and USA TODAY. FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES was also published in the U.K. (Random House, 2007), South Korea (Image Box Publishing) and Italy (Einaudi). She lives in New York City  with her husband and son where she is working on her second novel PACHINKO.