Cheryl Lu-lien Tan
AUTHOR

Cheryl Lu-lien Tan

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Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is the inaugural George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. She is a New York City-based Singaporean novelist, journalist, and the author of the novel “Sarong Party Girls” (William Morrow, 2016) and the memoir “A Tiger In The Kitchen” (Hyperion, 2011). Both books were international bestsellers. She is the co-creator and co-editor of “Anonymous Sex” (Scribner Books, 2022), which was also an international bestseller, and the editor of the anthology “Singapore Noir” (Akashic Books, 2014). Tan is very active in the non-profit arts world -- in 2024 she was named the inaugural Chair of the Peyton Evans Artists Residency (PEAR) Alumni Network at the Studios of Key West, a non-profit arts organization in Florida. She has also been on the Board of Trustees of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program since 2022. The National Arts Council of Singapore has awarded her multiple grants in support of her writing. Prior to writing novels, Tan was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, National Geographic, Foreign Policy, Marie Claire, Newsweek, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Topeka) Capital-Journal and The (Singapore) Straits Times among other places. She has been an artist in residence at Yaddo, where she wrote “A Tiger in the Kitchen,” Hawthornden Castle, Le Moulin à Nef, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Ledig House, the City of Barcelona Vil-la Joana Writer in Residence Program and the Studios of Key West among other places. Born and raised in Singapore, she crossed the ocean at age 18 to go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Unsure of whether she would remain in the U.S. after college, she interned in places as disparate as possible. She hung out with Harley Davidson enthusiasts in Topeka, Kan., interviewed gypsies about their burial rituals in Portland, Ore., covered July 4 in Washington, D.C., and chronicled the life and times of the Boomerang Pleasure Club, a group of Italian-American men that were getting together to cook, play cards and gab about women for decades in their storefront “clubhouse” in Chicago. An active member of the Asian American Journalists Association, she served on its national board for seven years, ending in 2010.
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