Tao Lin

Tao Lin (born July 2, 1983) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist.

He has published four novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, as well as an extensive assortment of online content.

He attended Lake Howell High School, and graduated from New York University in 2005 with a B.A. in journalism.

The allegations stem from 2005, when Kennedy and Lin dated.

At the time, Kennedy was 16 and Lin was 22.

Lin responded on Facebook, denying the allegations.

Kennedy deleted the tweets and asked Jezebel to take down the article, a request Jezebel ignored.

In November 2006 Lin's first book, a poetry collection titled you are a little bit happier than i am, was published.

It was the winner of Action Books' December Prize and has been a small-press bestseller.

In 2008, Lin founded the independent press Muumuu House.

The press has published four print books and over 100 stories, essays, and poems online, including work by Megan Boyle, Marie Calloway, Sheila Heti, and James Purdy.

Lin quit his job after selling shares of the future royalties of his novel Richard Yates online in 2009.

After Richard Yates, Lin got a literary agent, Bill Clegg, who sold his next book, Taipei, to Vintage Books, which has published his subsequent work.

Lin's work has been praised in the UK, including positive reviews from The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, which called Lin "a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age", and a 2010 career overview by the London Review of Books.

In 2011, Lin and his ex-wife Megan Boyle founded MDMAfilms, a film production company, through which they released three experimental films, including Mumblecore.

The films were made using a Macbook's iSight camera on an extremely low budget.

Lin has lectured on his writing, poetry, and art at Vassar College, Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College, UNC Chapel Hill, and other universities and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum.

In 2012 and in 2015 he taught a graduate course at Sarah Lawrence College called "The Contemporary Short Story."

His third novel, Taipei, was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013.

Since 2013, Lin's work has been associated with the mode of writing called "autofiction."

Fellow autofictioners have praised his work.

Ben Lerner said, "One thing I like about Tao’s writing is how beside the point for me ‘liking’ it feels—it's a frank depiction of the rhythm of a contemporary consciousness or lack of consciousness and so it has a power that bypasses those questions of taste entirely. Like it or not, it has the force of the real."

In 2014, the website Jezebel posted screenshots of tweets by Lin's former girlfriend, writer E.R. Kennedy, alleging abuse, statutory rape, and plagiarism.

Lin began drawing what he called "mandalas" in 2014.

Initially, he sold them on eBay.

Mandala 12 was published on the cover of an issue of Vice Magazine.

In an interview with Arachne, Lin said, "On February 12, 2014, I was absently drawing on graph paper. I drew what looked to me like a crop-circle idea. I drew over it, adding layers. When I was finished it looked like a mandala, and the paper I was using was square, like in mandalas, so I called it a mandala."

Lin's writing has attracted negative and positive criticism from various publications.

Gawker once called him "maybe perhaps the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with", though he was later "pardoned".

After reading this criticism, Lin retaliated by completely covering the front door of the Gawker office building with stickers bearing Britney Spears's name.

Later, Gawker published a piece Lin had written.

L Magazine wrote, "We've long been deeply irked by Lin's vacuous posturing and 'I know you are but what am I' dorm-room philosophizing".

Sam Anderson wrote in New York Magazine, "Dismissing Lin, however, ignores the fact that he is deeply smart, funny, and head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be."

Miranda July has called Lin's work "moving and necessary."

The Atlantic described Lin as having a "fairly staggering" knack for self-promotion.

The same article read, "there's something unusual about a writer being so transparent, so ready to tell you every insignificant detail of a seemingly eventful day, so aware of his next novel's word count, yet also remaining so opaque, mysterious, 'inscrutable.'" In n+1, critic Frank Guan called Lin "the first great male Asian author of American descent [sic]."

His nonfiction book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change was published by Vintage on May 1, 2018.

His fourth novel, Leave Society, was published by Vintage on August 3, 2021.

Lin was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to Taiwanese parents and grew up in suburbs in and around Orlando, Florida.

Lin moved to Hawaii in January 2020.