Lan Samantha Chang (Chinese: 張嵐; pinyin: Zhāng Lán; born 1965) is a Taiwanese-American novelist and short story writer.

Chang's mother was an undergraduate at Mount Mercy College and her father graduated from Columbia University with a degree in chemical engineering.

The New York Times Book Review called it "Elegant.… A delicately calculated balance sheet of the losses and gains of immigrants whose lives are stretched between two radically different cultures.

Publishers Weekly noted: "It is memory — rather than dramatic action — at which Chang excels; her prose is lovely.

The book received a starred review from Booklist and praise: "Among the many threads Chang elegantly pursues—the fraught relationships between mentors and students, the value of poetry, the price of ambition—it is her indelible portrait of the loneliness of artistic endeavor that will haunt readers the most in this exquisitely written novel about the poet’s lot."

NPR wrote: "This relatively short novel begins small, but blossoms into a full and resonant story of the pains and perils, falsehoods and truths of trying to be an American artist, in this case poet, against all odds, psychological and social.

[13] Chang has received fellowships from MacDowell, the American Library in Paris, the Guggenheim Foundation,[14] the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

"[20] About her work as the program director, Oprah Daily wrote: "Under Lan Samantha Chang’s mentorship, a new generation of writers has emerged.