Leonard Chang was born in New York City, and grew up on Long Island, where he attended the public schools in Merrick.After high school, Leonard Chang studied at Dartmouth College, but took time off after his sophomore year to intern briefly with the Peace Corps in Kingston, Jamaica. He soon returned to the United States, where he continued his studies in Philosophy at Harvard University, and graduated with honors. From there, he attended the Master's of Fine Arts program at the University of California at Irvine, and received his M.F.A. in 1994. His first novel, entitled The Fruit 'N Food, was published in 1996 and won the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction that year,

and is now taught at colleges around the country. His second novel, Dispatches from the Cold, published in 1998, won a San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Literature, and has been optioned for a film. His new novel, Over the Shoulder, will be published in the Spring of 2001 by The Ecco Press.

In addition to novels, he writes short stories, essays, and book reviews, and his work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Crescent Review, Prairie Schooner, Confluence, Crab Orchard Review, Bamboo Ridge, and Lynx Eye. He currently teaches at the graduate writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. He lives in theSan Francisco Bay Area, and is working on a new novel.