Hello! I'm Irene, and I write short stories, novels, and screenplays. I live in Los Angeles, but I'm really from a suburb of Seattle, and my family is really from China. I'm bi, so I like dogs and cats but am allergic to both. I also like whiskey, mushroom hunting, and all puzzle formats.

You can read my "very depressing" short stories in the North American Review, Pinch, Uncharted, and more. My 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. Preemptively, I must assure you I am a very happy person.

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), and for my filmmaking from Stowe Story Labs (2023) and Fulbright (2017-2018), in which I sold popcorn for a circus in Casablanca. 

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

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