Jade Chang

Jade Chang is a Chinese-American journalist and writer who lives in Los Angeles. Her debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, was published in 2016 and was named to several autumn reading lists. She is the recipient of the VCU-Cabell First Novelist Prize.

Personal life Chang was born in Ohio and moved to the Los Angeles area (San Fernando Valley) with her family in 1985. Her parents had each separately emigrated from China to Taiwan in 1949, and later emigrated to the United States, where they met while attending graduate school.

Career After graduating from college, Chang's first paying job was as a researcher for the J. Peterman Company. Afterwards, she worked as an arts journalist and editor while writing "her serious novel" at night. Chang also served as the West Coast editor for Metropolis

Chang wrote The Wangs vs. the World over a period of five years after that party. When Chang submitted the unsolicited manuscript to Eddie Huang's literary agent, Marc Gerald, it was accepted and the publishing rights were put up for auction. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt won the bidding for the American rights, and made it their lead novel for October 2016. The novel was Helen Atsma's first acquisition for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who said it was the "rare novel that makes me both laugh out loud and cry." A TV series has been development with Hulu since early 2018.

In 2020, Chang wrote one episode for Netflix original series The Baby-Sitters Club, her first credited television work, "Claudia and Mean Janine" which focuses on Claudia learning her grandmother was forced to live in Manzanar, a detention camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Influences Chang cites Gordon Korman's No Coins, Please as one of her favorite books from childhood which may have unconsciously influenced the road-trip structure of The Wangs.