Author Events

Born in the U.S. in 1952 to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She attended five colleges: Linfield College, San Jose City College, San Jose State University, University of California at Santa Cruz, and University of California at Berkeley.

In 1987, Amy went to China for the first time, accompanied by her mother. When she returned home, she learned that she had received several offers based on her submission of three short stories. The resulting book of connected stories,The Joy Luck Club, was hailed as a novel and became a surprise bestseller, spending over forty weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Amy has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagellonium, and Georgetown both in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar. She did a TED talk on creativity and spoke at the White House, appeared on the popular NPR program Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, as well as on Sesame Street.and in the documentary Boomers. The National Endowment for the Arts chose The Joy Luck Club for its inaugural Big Read program in 2007. Read her full bio here.