Hello! I'm Irene, and I write short stories, novels, and screenplays. I live in Los Angeles, but I'm really from Seattle, and my family is really from China. I'm bisexual, which means I like dogs and cats but am allergic to both. Twice a year, I abscond to Mendocino with my parents to hunt for chanterelles.

You can read my "very depressing" short stories in the North American Review, Pinch, Uncharted, and more. My only slightly less depressing personal essays appear in Joysauce, The New York Times, and Roads & Kingdoms. In selected work, you will find a selection of my work. I am currently writing one novel and revising another.

I'm extremely grateful to have received residencies and fellowships for my fiction from Yaddo (2026), Tin House (2025), and The Mount + Straw Dog Writers Guild (2025). In 2025, I was also a finalist for One Story's Adina Talve-Goodman fellowship. My filmmaking has received support from Stowe Story Labs (2023) and Fulbright Morocco (2017-2018), which took me to a circus in Casablanca. 

Please enjoy this picture of me reading a ghost story in a spooky house.

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