Alexander Chee
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alexanderchee.bsky.social
Alexander Chee
@alexanderchee.bsky.social
60K followers 4.1K following 9.6K posts
Novelist and essayist, most recently author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Professor of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He/him. Agent: Jin Auh, The Wylie Agency. alexanderchee.net
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alexanderchee.bsky.social
Second time we’ve had snow in my corner of Vermont this week. It hasn’t lasted yet so we’ll see.
About an inch or two of snow on a yard, a stone wall and trees. The sky is white with clouds, the trees are dark but lined with snow.
November 9, 2025 at 11:43 AM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Walid Alzaq is still surviving in Gaza with his beautiful family, still raising funds for their care and feeding, if you can help. chuffed.org/project/1253...
November 7, 2025 at 8:00 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
A long time ago in my aunt’s town, Rangeley, ME, we met a brilliant French photographer named Madeleine de Sinéty and her bookish son Peter, who has since grown up and as I just learned, translated this memoir by Pierre Guyotat, for @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social.
October 29, 2025 at 5:53 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Yes I will read Ron Currie’s revenge novel set in Waterville, ME.
A green hardcover book with a raven looking down at a smoking stubbed out cigarette, lipstick on the filter. Title in black: The SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH of BABS DIONNE RON CURRIE AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING MATTERS!
October 29, 2025 at 2:17 AM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Tell me about it, Co-Star
Your day at a glance: You have a lot on your plate.
October 27, 2025 at 6:03 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Walid and his kids are back in the north of Gaza and need our help. chuffed.org/project/1253...
October 27, 2025 at 1:39 AM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Hello from Southern Maine.
A car in profile outfitted to resemble an LL Bean boot, complete with laces and the rubber sole. Text on the “ankle” reads GRAND OPENING L.L.Bean CONSUMER SQUARE New Hatford, NY Oct. 24-25
October 26, 2025 at 4:47 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Me in my aerobics teacher era, if also off-duty.
Me in 1986 on a sidewalk on the campus: Slender, in a tank top and khaki shorts, boat shoes I didn’t remember. A bag on the shoulder.
October 26, 2025 at 1:03 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
The cop on the left looks as if he’s admiring him. The cop to the right seems furious with him, as if he knows him and is getting ready to speak.
Two cops, one Black and one white, look at a well-dressed young white man with different intensities, and on his right two women, one white and one Asian, look differently worried.
October 23, 2025 at 11:16 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
I love how much story is just in the tensions between the police and the man with the umbrella in this photo. Or the apprehension on the face of the person behind the Fedora. Or the woman behind that person, who looks like she could be a film star also.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/s...
Caption: In a scene that confused many people on social media, a sharply-dressed man walked police officers blocking the entrance at the Louvre on Sunday. Thibault Camus/Associated Press
October 23, 2025 at 10:39 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Walid’s daughters keep coming up smiling no matter how terrible it gets in Gaza. Please help the family stay alive? chuffed.org/project/1253...
Two adorable Palestinian girls of about age 8, with light brown hair in pig tails, smiling and walking along a dirt corridor in a tent.
October 19, 2025 at 3:53 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Dinner with these two hotties at Izakaya Minato in Portland, thanks to @joshthelibromancer.bsky.social and @printbookstore.bsky.social.
A wooden bar at a Japanese Izakaya. A Negroni sits next to two books nonchalantly, as if it is not obsessed with them. They are THE ENGLISH UNDERSTAND WOOL HELEN DEWITT And Gabrielle Calvocoressi The New Economy A porcelain dish and chopsticks sit in the front of the image.
October 12, 2025 at 12:12 AM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
The Italian edition of my first novel, translated by the wonderful Chiara Buffa, is available later this week, 10/10/25, from NN Editore in Milan. And this cover makes my old teen witch heart glad.

www.nneditore.it/libro/979125...
An illustration of a fox dressed in the ribcage of a human, the eyes white with death or transfiguration, surrounded by red and blue-green leaves. The image has a large San serif bold N superimposed, with the image clear inside the letter and faintly colored by a rust orange fade otherwise, the trademark of the house, NN Editore. The text in white reads ALEXANDER CHEE Edimburgo NNE
October 6, 2025 at 10:26 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
The Mark Bibbins Brian Chanbers cat brothers.
A beautiful grey and white cat sitting in a wooden table. A beautiful grey and white cat sitting a white chair.
October 5, 2025 at 3:46 AM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Ramzi in his tent in Southern Gaza, now with a Binance link he is so proud to have created if you are inclined that way. Otherwise his Chuffed, if you can help, is here. He’s raised some tent rent and now needs food and water: chuffed.org/project/1319...
A young man in his tent, trees and water visible through the door.
October 1, 2025 at 3:14 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
lol yes search page sample
Various photos of mostly white men in various sages of undress. A man from the waist down in boxers, a shirtless man in a headdress, football players about to kiss, men with their feet in the air inexplicably. Some headlines from my search page on Instagram: THE HOT CONTESTANT WHO BROKE HARD QUIZ I was the only white guy Alright don't take the celebration too far fellast! ١٢٢ ٢ 37 There's one more! Russell Tovey names Jonathan Groff as his favourite on-screen kiss: "We had a very nice time"
September 29, 2025 at 11:58 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Age yourself with a movie you saw in a theater as a kid.
The original STAR WARS film poster. A blond young white man, Luke Skywalker, holds a light saber over his head, his bronze chest exposed. A brunette white woman in white dress, Princess Leia, holds a pistol aimed at the ground, a white cape rippling in the wind. Robots stand behind them. And this is all superimposed against the enormous black helmet of Darth Vader. Fighter ships fly in formation in space beside his head. The text reads: A long time ago in a galaxy for, for away... WARS TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX Presents A LUCASFILM LTD. PRODUCTION STAR WARS Starring MARK HAMILL HARRISON FORD CARRIE FISHER PETER CUSHING and ALEC GUINNESS Witten and Directed by GEORGE LUCAS Produced by GARY KURTZ Music by JOHN WILLIAMS PANAVISION* PRINTS BY DE LUXE" TECHNICOLOR" PG PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUSSESTED eD Mutan Petre Soundras on 20th Century Recurts and lapes Moking fims Sound letser DO [DOLBY SYSTEM Noise Reduction - High Fidelity 11/21-0
September 28, 2025 at 9:26 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Walid and his daughtees have survived the trip south in Gaza also, and are rebuilding in their new tent. Can we help keep them alive? chuffed.org/project/1253...
September 26, 2025 at 5:26 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Ramzi escaped the North, thankfully, and is now fundraising for rent for his tent plot and food also. chuffed.org/project/1319...
A young Gazan man stands atop a refugee camp in Gaza near the ocean.
September 26, 2025 at 1:33 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Ramzi is fundraising for rent so as not to lose his spot for his tent. chuffed.org/project/1319...
September 22, 2025 at 10:34 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
With your help Ramzi has made it to Southern Gaza, but must now pay rent . chuffed.org/project/1319...
Ramzi, a young Palestinian man, astride a caravan of people and their possessions, along the beach.
September 21, 2025 at 4:48 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
I would love someone to ask him about why he did this on his last full day in office back in 2021 for the Venezuelan exiles, as it seems a lot like he was loading a trap.
Venezuela Members of the audience wave Venezuelan and American flags as President Donald Trump speaks to a Venezuelan American community in Miami, Fla., on Feb. 18, 2019. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo By SABRINA RODRIGUEZ 01/19/2021 09:24 PM EST f President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he will offer Venezuelan exiles protection from deportation, a move he has considered for years but refused to do until his last full day in office. Trump is using the little-known Deferred Enforced Departure program, or DED, to offer temporary legal status to Venezuelans fleeing the humanitarian crisis brought on by Nicolás Maduro's regime. DED, similar to Temporary Protected Status or TPS, protects recipients from deportation and allows them to get work permits. However, it is granted directly by the president instead of the Department of Homeland Security.
September 20, 2025 at 7:50 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Here in Ptown today for their book festival. Tonight at the Ptown Public Library I talk to my former student @lucaseschaefer.bsky.social about his debut novel, The Slip, and how it went from an idea for interconnected stories to a novel, and what we learned from each other, back then and now. 6pm.
THE SLIP LUCAS SCHAEFER a novel "Symphonic, expansive, irresistibly engrossing, utterly unpredictable, The Slip is immense in ambition, bursting with language, dauntless in scope and imagination." -TÉA OBREHT
September 20, 2025 at 3:56 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
“She came to Paris, she said, to kill the 19th century.”
A photo of a hardcover book with a black and white picture photo of Gertrude Stein gazing as if at the reader, wearing a brocade vest, a jeweled broach at her shirt collar. Her hair is cropped short. Her name and the titles are in blue and white text above and in front of her. A small blurb in black print floats beside her. GERTRUDE STEIN •Wade on Stein is a I have been waiting for this book my entire life." -Sheila Heti, author of AN AFTERLIFE FRANCESCA author of Square Haunting: WADE Between the Wars
September 15, 2025 at 11:53 PM
alexanderchee.bsky.social
Edward P. Jones is the new guest editor for the O. Henry Prize this year and his salty introduction does not disappoint.
A paperback book on a white table, cover is blue-green leaves on an orange background. Text reads: The Best Short Stories 2025 Edited by Edward P. Jones THE O. HENRY PRIZE WINNERS "Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction." —The Atlantic Monthly Introduction There were small reasons, there were large reasons that I was reluctant to be the guest editor for The Best Short Stories 2025: The O. Henry Prize Winners. I had not been keeping up with the world of published short stories and felt incapable of judging what was now being created and shared in the magazines not only in the United States but in other countries as well. Now and again, I had come across work that I did not care for, that I thought might be representative of what was currently popular-extremely short pieces, in some cases, works catering to societies of folks too busy to take in substantive structures, works that were just Snapchats, works that were, as William Faulkner said, "not of the heart but of the glands." There was, for example, a "story" about a woman sitting in a Starbucks-like shop watching people come and go as they bought sweetened swill-line after line of bland descriptions of people buying. Then, as if the writer had grown tired, the piece ended after two pages. That was it. And I feared "stories" like the one read by an author who once participated with me at a festival. To explain what he had written and to help the audience see the grandness of his work, this guy relied on a giant screen on which various images were projected. I… The Best Short Srories 2025: The O. Henry Prize Winners contains.. twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest edicor Edward P. Jones has curated a dazzling assemblage of stories by an array of talented writers. The stories are accompanied by an introduction by Jones, fascinating observations from the winning writers on what inspired their work, and an extensive and useful directory of magazines and literary websites that publish short fiction. Wendell Berry • Gina Chung • Addie Citchens Michael Deagler • Lindsey Drager • Clyde Edgerton Dave Eggers • Madeline fitch • Indya Finch • Alice Hoffman Jane Kalu • Thomas Korsgaard (translator, Martin Aitken) Ling Ma • Anthony Marra • Lori Ostlund • Ehsaneh Sadr Daniel Saldaña París (translator, Christina MacSweeney) Zak Salih • Yah Yah Scholfield • Chika Unigwe EDWARD P. JONES is the author of the story collections All Aunt Hagar's Children and Lost in the City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lannan Literary Award. His novel, The Known World, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story. JENNY MINTON QUIGLEY, series editor, is the author of a mem-oir, The Early Birds, and editor of the anthology Lolita in the Afterlife.
September 15, 2025 at 7:20 PM