Tao Lin (Chinese: 林韜; born July 2, 1983) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist.

He has published four novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, as well as an extensive assortment of online content.

The press has published four print books and over 100 stories, essays, and poems online, including work by Megan Boyle, Marie Calloway, Sheila Heti, and James Purdy.

After reading this criticism, Lin retaliated by completely covering the front door of the Gawker office building with stickers bearing Britney Spears's name.

[20] Sam Anderson wrote in New York Magazine, "Dismissing Lin, however, ignores the fact that he is deeply smart, funny, and head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be.

The same article read, "there's something unusual about a writer being so transparent, so ready to tell you every insignificant detail of a seemingly eventful day, so aware of his next novel's word count, yet also remaining so opaque, mysterious, 'inscrutable.

'"[23] In n+1, critic Frank Guan called Lin "the first great male Asian author of American descent [sic].

Of the stories, Jennifer Bassett wrote in KGB Lit Journal, "In structure and tone, they have the feel of early Lorrie Moore and Deborah Eisenberg.

[38] Bookslut wrote, "it shares an affected childishness with bands like The Moldy Peaches and it has a put-on weirdness reminiscent of Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You.

"[40] The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Tao Lin's sly, forlorn, deadpan humor jumps off the page [...] will delight fans of everyone from Mark Twain to Michelle Tea.

"[44] In a December 2009 episode of KCRW's Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt called the novella "the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated"[45] and Lin described the novella's style as deliberately "concrete, with all the focus on surface details, with no sentences devoted to thoughts or feelings, and I think that results in a kind of themelessness, that, in its lack of focus on anything else, the theme becomes, to me, the passage of time.

[citation needed]) The novel begins: "‘I’ve only had the opportunity to hold a hamster once,’ said Dakota Fanning on Gmail chat.

I think I cried a little.’" This opening will charm the innocent hearts of some readers; those less amused might find it cloying and gimmicky..." Bock wrote that "during important scenes, Lin slows time and piles sentences into longer paragraphs, replicating complex thought processes and shifting, nuanced moods, while showing his admiration for the work of Lydia Davis."

It has an unnecessary index, protagonists named after child stars, and a title that pays homage to a famous novelist who has no concrete connection with the book ...

They steal vegan sushi from Whole Foods, watch art films, and spend hours on Gmail chat ... As time passes, the relationship starts to slip its traces.

[52] (Lin and his publishers omitted the negative portion of Ellis's tweet in a blurb quotation they printed on Taipei's cover.

[56] On June 18, critic Emily Witt wrote in The Daily Beast:[57] Taipei is exactly the kind of book I hoped Tao Lin would one day write.

He is one of the few fiction writers around who engages with contemporary life, rather than treating his writing online as existing in opposition to or apart from the hallowed analog space of the novel.

"On June 30, in The New York Times Book Review, Clancy Martin wrote: His writing is weird, upsetting, memorable, honest—and it's only getting better [...] But I didn't anticipate Taipei, his latest, which is, to put it bluntly, a gigantic leap forward.

Taipei was included on best book of the year lists by the Times Literary Supplement,[64] Village Voice,[65] Slate,[66] Salon, Bookforum,[67] The Week, Maisonneuve,[68] and Complex,[69] among others.

[70] On June 15, 2015, Short Flight/Long Drive Books published a collaborative double-book called Selected Tweets by Lin and poet Mira Gonzalez.

Emma Kolchin-Miller, writing in the Columbia Spectator, described the book as featuring "a selection of bleak, depressed, disturbing, funny, and personal tweets that create a fragmented narrative and show how Twitter can serve as a platform for art, storytelling, and connection.

"[71] Andrea Longini, writing for Electric Literature, opined: "Although Twitter in name implies a kind of chatter or 'twittering,' Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez have elevated the medium into an art form with the power to transmit authentic observations.

[74] In Scientific American, John Horgan wrote, "If an aspirant asks for an example of experimental science writing, I’ll recommend Trip.

The book veers from excruciatingly candid autobiography to biography (of McKenna) to investigative journalism…to interview-based journalism to philosophical speculation to first-person accounts of the effects of DMT and Salvia.

It’s a superbly researched, moving, and formally inventive quest for re-enchantment, and Tao Lin’s most compelling and profound book yet.

In a review in The New Yorker, Andrea Long Chu wrote:The first sentence of almost every chapter contains at least one number, often several, like a medical record: "Thirty tabs of LSD arrived on day thirty-five."

There is a translated quality to this kind of writing, as if Lin were rendering Mandarin word for word; in fact, given Li’s propensity for audio recordings, this is likely exactly what happened ... the effect he’s created is a kind of fastidious plotlessness, one whose accuracy to life, affected or not, has the ambivalent virtue of being, like life itself, mostly boring.

On the second reading, when I was better accustomed to Lin’s humor and his delight in multiplicity, it seemed to me both metaphorical and literal, playful and quite serious, a brilliant, almost perfect ending.