AGE: 28
BASED IN: San Jose
NOW PLUGGING: Needlemouth, October 2026
At 28, K-Ming Chang has authored nine books, won a Lambda Literary Award for the short story collection Gods of Want, and been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, and Turkish, among other languages. This fall, the staggeringly prolific young writer returns with Needlemouth, in which three cousins are set on a violent journey by a demon that appears bedside.
What’s writing for you? An act of agony? Delight?
I try to approach writing as an act of play, a place of infinite possibility and pleasure, and that’s probably why I tend to find drafting so endlessly generative and exciting. To me, drafting is about creating something unformed and therefore infinitely possible, while revision is about making decisions, which I find agonizing as a deeply indecisive person.
I also think about writing as an act of transformation, a way to move beyond representation and replication and invent new languages and a “horizon of being,” in the words of José Esteban Muñoz. He writes that queerness is about what is not yet here. That idea of looking constantly toward what is yet to arrive, what can only be glimpsed briefly, appeals to me deeply as a writer.
What’s the first thing you do when you sit down to work?
I always read before I begin to write—most often someone else’s work, but sometimes parts of my own drafts, usually a side project that I’ve been tinkering with. Then I’ll fumble with a few sentences, adjust a few words here and there, and begin to play with the language. It feels like a low-stakes way of getting into my figurative sandbox.
Describe a moment when you lost faith. What would you tell that younger writer?
I lose faith all the time, sometimes multiple times a day! What helps sustain me isn’t faith so much as rage. A desire to make other worlds possible and a desire to create through destruction. I’d tell myself to let that rage fuel me, transform me, compel me, invent me, and perpetually challenge me.
I’d tell myself not to fear it but to listen to it, and to worry less about whether it will be understood. Instead, that life-sustaining rage will lead me to a lineage of other writers, past and present, and it is a reminder not to compromise, a reminder that anything and everything is possible, and that all I have to do today is receive it.
What’s one word or phrase that you find yourself using (or over-using) in your work right now?
So many words! Sometimes it feels quite shameful. Moon, mouth, blood, anything related to the body and its fluids and its interior. I’m always obsessed with teeth and their many meanings. All kinds of teeth, all species of teeth! And this isn’t necessarily a word or a phrase, but right now I’m writing about a lot of birds, both mythical and directly outside my window.
What creature comforts do you turn to on deadline?
This is a very literal creature comfort—I love to play with my three pet parrots. They’re playful and talkative, and their favorite thing to destroy is books, which is difficult for someone who loves to leave books lying around unattended, and also heartwarming, because it means they respond to the sight of my own books with great enthusiasm.
in your life?
