Alec Ash
““A talented observer of today’s China.””
© John CairnsAlec Ash is a writer and editor focused on China, where he lived from 2008–2022. He is author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016), literary non-fiction about the lives of young Chinese people, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He was born in England, and studied English literature at Oxford University. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Sunday Times and elsewhere. He was editor of the China Channel at the Los Angeles Review of Books, contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters (University of California Press, 2012), and co-editor of the anthology While We’re Here (Earnshaw Books, 2015).
Currently he is editor of the China Books Review at Asia Society. His latest book is The Mountains Are High (Scribe, 2024), about city escapees in the countryside of Dali, southwest China.
Published works
