Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (born February 14, 1972)[1] is a Chinese American writer. She previously taught writing and literature in the Graduate MFA Writing program at Otis College of Art and Design until 2015.[2] Bynum is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. Her brother is musician Taylor Ho Bynum.[3]

Fairy tales are a common theme in many of her works. Bynum describes fairy tales by saying that "they always walk that line between wonder and darkness."[4] Madeleine is Sleeping was published by Harcourt in 2004, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her short stories, including excerpts from her new novel, have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Triquarterly, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and in Best American Short Stories.[5] Her second novel, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, was published in September 2008 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2009.[6]

In a 2009 book review of Ms. Hempel Chronicles published in the Sunday book review of The New York Times, Josh Emmons notes that Bynum's "prose remains nimble and entertaining, a model of quiet control well suited to its subject" and that the "deftness with which [Ms. Hempel] observes and describes her world and its inhabitants is so engaging that for all its circumspection and regrettable lacunae, “Ms. Hempel Chronicles” works as an account of how nostalgia — both for what was and might have been — can generate a thousand mercies."[7]

In 2010, Bynum was named one of The New Yorker's top "20 Under 40" fiction writers in which the editors note her works "offer idiosyncratic, voice-driven narratives."[8]

In 2017, she was featured in an interview in The New Yorker on surviving adolescence and social media.[9]