Sonya Chung is a novelist, essayist, teacher, and editor whose writing process could easily prove that slow and steady wins the race. She is the author of the novel Long for This World, which was published by Scribner in 2010. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Crab Orchard Review, Tin House, Sonora Review, FiveChapters, BOMB Magazine, and the anthology The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, among others.
Chung is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Bronx Council on the Arts Writers’ Fellowship and Residency, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She is currently a staff writer at The Millions and the founding editor of the newly launched literary site Bloom. She also teaches fiction at Columbia University.
During this interview – surrounded by Columbia students, staff, and faculty clamoring for caffeine at Joe Coffee – Chung broke up the chaotic energy with calm focus as she relayed how she came to find balance as a professional writer. Within the hour, it became more difficult to think in terms of slow and steady winning the race, and easier to consider the peaceful possibility of there being no race at all.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
To be honest, when I was a kid I didn’t really think about that. I wasn’t someone who dreamed about being a ballerina or fireman, or anything like that.
No astronaut ambitions?
No astronaut ambitions.
Did you grow up in an artsy household?
I grew up not at all in an artsy household. I came from a family of doctors and ministers. I never imagined being either of those things, which is probably partly why I didn’t have any idea what I was going to be. The models around me didn’t click, and I didn’t really know what else was out there.
Was there a point when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
When I was a teenager, not unlike most teenagers, I journalled a lot. And I was kind of depressive [laughs] – also not unlike many teenagers.
And writers.
And writers. I was a very internalized person, and I spent a lot of time putting that into writing. But again, I never really knew that you could be a writer. I didn’t really know what that was. Even when I was in college, I was still in that same place, where I knew what I didn’t want to do. Nothing that was presented to me seemed to fit, and I still didn’t quite know what the possibilities were.
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Renee Robinson is a legendary American dancer who, on December 9th, 2012 at City Center in New York City, danced her last dance as the iconic woman with the umbrella in “Revelations,” one of the most popular and recognizable dances in modern history. Robinson has retired after over thirty years with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, her tenure being the longest of any female dancer in the history of the company. She was the last dancer in the company to have been chosen by Alvin Ailey himself. 
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