During her stay at the American Academy as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in Fiction in fall 2021, Lan Samantha Chang gave the finishing touch to her much-anticipated new novel “The Family Chao,” to be published by W.W. Norton & Company in February 2022.

In this episode, you can find out how rediscovering Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” has shaped Chang’s own writing, what it means to be an immigrant, or the child of immigrants, in the Midwest, and why two Chinese-American brothers have to visit an American diner to find some privacy.

Host: Denise Gamon
Producer: Juliane Schallau
Music: Valium by nothanks
Photo: Juliane Schallau