Ling Ma

Ling Ma is a Chinese American novelist and assistant professor of practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago. Her first book, Severance, won a 2018 Kirkus Prize and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 2018[1] and shortlisted for the 2019 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.[2] Her second book, Bliss Montage, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Story Prize.[3][4]

Ling Ma
Ma in 2023
Born
Sanming, Fujian, China
Occupation(s)Writer, professor
Known forSeverance
AwardsKirkus Prize; Windham-Campbell Literature Prize; Story Prize
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago

Early life

Ma was born in Sanming, Fujian, China,[5] initially an only child because of China's "one-child policy."[6] She grew up in Utah, Nebraska, and Kansas.[7] She has an AB from the University of Chicago and received an MFA from Cornell University.[8]

Career

Ma's debut novel, Severance, is described as "a biting indictment of late-stage capitalism and a chilling vision of what comes after, but that doesn’t mean it’s a Marxist screed or a dry Hobbesian thought experiment."[9] Severance is a novel that is partially post-apocalyptic horror, and partially office satire.[10] It follows the novel's narrator in the aftermath of the outbreak of a deadly fever that has killed almost everyone in the US.[11] An earlier chapter from the book won a 2015 Disquiet Literary Prize, the Graywolf Prize.[12]

Ma began the novel while working as a fact checker for Playboy, a job she held from 2009 to 2012.[13] It began as a short story, written in her office during her last few months there; after her layoff, it became a novel which she wrote while living on severance pay.[14] She took four years to write it,[10] and finished the novel at Cornell as part of the work in her MFA program.[15] Ma said she "felt pressured to write a traditional immigration novel" while in the MFA program at Cornell, but instead decided to write about otherness and alienation via the trope of zombie apocalypse.[7]

Ma has also published short stories in Granta, Playboy, and the Chicago Reader.[16] Ma's short story "Peking Duck" appears in the 2022 The New Yorker Fiction Issue.[17] Her first collection of short stories, Bliss Montage, was published in September 2022.[18] The collection won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.[19]

She is the recipient of a 2023 Windham Campbell Prize for fiction.[20]

Works
  • Ma, Ling (2018). Severance: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374261597.
  • Ma, Ling (2022). Bliss Montage. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374293512.

References
  1. "2018 Finalists". Kirkus Reviews. 2016-11-11. Archived from the original on 2019-01-10. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  2. "Announcing the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists". PEN America. 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2019-02-23.
  3. "Here Are This Year's Finalists for the Story Prize". LitHub. January 10, 2023.
  4. "Ling Ma's 'Bliss Montage' wins $20,000 Story Prize". ABC News. March 15, 2023.
  5. Ma, Ling. "Bio". Tumblr. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  6. Shapiro, Ari (2018-08-10). "In Satirical 'Severance,' A Stricken Country Works Itself To Death". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  7. Borrelli, Christopher (2019-01-15). "Chicago author Ling Ma never thought she'd write a zombie apocalypse novel. Here's what changed her mind". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  8. "People: Ling Ma". University of Chicago, Division of the Humanities. Retrieved 2022-09-10.
  9. SEVERANCE by Ling Ma | Kirkus Reviews.
  10. Schaub, Michael (24 August 2018). "'Office politics is, to some degree, horrifying' - Ling Ma on her horror-satire 'Severance'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  11. "'Severance' Is the Apocalyptic Millennial New York Immigrant Story You Didn't Know You Needed". Electric Literature. 2018-08-14. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  12. "Finalist winners 2015". Disquiet International. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  13. Ma, Ling (2018-08-10). "Crying At The Playboy Office". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  14. Fan, Jiayang (December 10, 2018). "Ling Ma's "Severance" Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  15. Morgan, Adam (2018-08-14). "In 'Severance,' Ling Ma Destroys New York City". Chicago Review of Books. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  16. Day, Madeline (2018-08-22). "Apocalyptic Office Novel: An Interview with Ling Ma". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2019-01-23.
  17. ""Peking Duck"". The New Yorker. 2022-06-29. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  18. Leyshon, Cressida (July 4, 2022). "Ling Ma on Writers and Their Parents". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2022-07-18.
  19. Varno, David (2023-02-01). "NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE ANNOUNCES FINALISTS FOR PUBLISHING YEAR 2022 - National Book Critics Circle". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  20. "2023 Prize Recipients". Windham Campbell Prizes 2023. Windham Campbell Prizes. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
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