Jiadai Lin

Jiadai Lin is a Chinese American writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her nonfiction tends to explore minor rebellions, intimate friendships, twisted ambitions, and what it means to be a good immigrant daughter. Jiadai’s work appears in Brevity, Pigeon Pages, december, The Rumpus, and First Person Singular, among other places, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2022) and longlisted twice for the Granum Prize (2022, 2023).

Jiadai is working on a coming-of-age memoir examining the quiet rebellions that led to her decision in 2015 to leave her job as a corporate lawyer to pursue her dream of being a writer. An excerpt of this project received the 2024 Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction.

Jiadai is currently a mentee at the Book Project with Lighthouse Writers Workshop. In the past, she has participated in StoryStudio Chicago’s Essay Collection in a Year program (2021-22) and workshops with The Kenyon Review (2023) and Tin House (2024). Jiadai is a graduate of Columbia University and works by day as a lawyer for start-up companies.