Bonnie Chau is from Southern California, where she studied art history and English literature at UCLA and ran writing programs for young students at the nonprofit 826LA. She received her MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and has worked at Poets & Writers, a lot of restaurants, a few bookstores, and a million other places. She edits at Public Books, Evergreen Review, and 4Columns; teaches creative writing and translation; and serves on the boards of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and Art Farm Nebraska.

Her hair no longer looks like this.