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Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American author and screenwriter from California. Her debut novel DISORIENTATION (Penguin Press / Picador) was a New York Times Editors' Choice Book, NYPL Young Lions Finalist and Thurber Prize for American Humor Finalist. The novel was optioned by AppleTV+ with Elaine set to adapt.

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A former Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at NYU, her Pushcart Award-winning short fiction appears in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, Ploughshares and The Atlantic, while her essays appear in The Cut and Vanity Fair. She is the recipient of the 2023 Fred R. Brown Literary Award. As a writing and workshop instructor, she has taught fiction for NYU, The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, Catapult, Accent Society, Kundiman and Tin House. Her work has been supported by the Harry Ransom Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Hedgebrook writers-in-residence program.

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Her multi-genre short story collection WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM comes out from Penguin Press on August 19, 2025.

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Elaine was a 2023 Sundance Episodic Lab fellow; her selected pilot GET HOME SAFE is an hour-long dark comedy thriller. Her half-hour comedy adapted from her short story, BANANA TREE GHOST, was optioned by Legendary Entertainment following a three-way bidding war. She was named a 2024 Series Creator to Watch by Gotham.

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