Chang-rae Lee to Serve as UIC Visiting Professor

Acclaimed Korean-American novelist Chang-rae Lee has accepted a three-year appointment to serve as a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Underwood International College (UIC).  Lee, a Pulitzer Prize Award finalist renowned for such novels as Native Speaker and The Surrendered, is currently Professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, where he has also served as Director of the Program in Creative Writing.
During his term, Professor Lee will teach creative writing seminars and lead writing workshops and other activities for UIC students.  Professor Lee is already well known among the UIC community, having been invited to serve as a visiting professor in the Shinhan Distinguished Faculty Program in 2007, 2008, and, most recently, in May of 2013.  Interviewed last spring by UIC’s Public Relations Office, Professor Lee underscored his belief that learning to write—and think—creatively is not merely a skill for artists, but rather a vehicle to success in fields beyond the arts:  “What we do in [creative writing classes] has no bearing on what the students will ultimately [do in their careers], but the class teaches them to express themselves creatively through storytelling. It’s artistic training but it’s not training for one particular thing.”  He added:  “People have found that creativity is important in all fields. That’s where you get innovative ideas, innovative techniques, and approaches to problems.”
At the age of three, Lee emigrated with his family from South Korea to the United States, earning an undergraduate degree from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon.  He briefly worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street before devoting himself to writing full-time.  A recipient of numerous awards and commendations, Lee’s first novel, Native Speaker (1995), won the PEN/Hemingway Award, while his second, A Gesture Life (1999), received the Asian American Literary Award.  In 2011, The Surrendered (2010) was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  His forthcoming novel, On Such a Full Sea, will appear in January 2014 from Riverhead Books.   
The ceremony marking Professor Lee’s appointment as Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor took place at Yonsei on Friday, October 4.  His term will begin in the spring of 2014 and run through the fall semester of 2016.