Chang-rae Lee (born July 29, 1965) is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University.

He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3 years old [2] to join his father, who was then a psychiatric resident and later established a successful practice in Westchester County, New York.

[3] The success of his debut novel, Native Speaker, led Lee to move to Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he was hired to direct and teach in the prestigious creative-writing program.

[1] Centered on a Korean-American industrial spy, the novel explores themes of alienation and betrayal as experienced by immigrants and first-generation citizens, in their struggle to assimilate in American life.

[5] His 2004 novel Aloft received mixed notices from the critics and featured Lee's first protagonist who is not Asian American, but a disengaged and isolated Italian-American suburbanite forced to deal with his world.

[8] Lee's next novel, On Such a Full Sea (2014) is set in a dystopian future version of the American city of Baltimore, Maryland called B-Mor where the main character, Fan, is a Chinese-American laborer working as a diver in a fish farm.