Yu, Charles 1976-

PERSONAL: Born 1976. Education: Graduated from University of California at Berkeley and Columbia Law School.

ADDRESSES: Home— Los Angeles, CA. Agent— Imprint Agency, 5 W. 101st St., Ste. 8B, New York, NY 10025.

CAREER: Attorney and writer. Practices law in Los Angeles, CA.

AWARDS, HONORS: Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, 2004, for “Class Three Superhero.”

WRITINGS

Third Class Superhero, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

Contributor to The Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories, 2004, del sol Press, 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Oxford Magazine, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and attorney Charles Yu published Third Class Superhero, his debut story collection, in 2006. According to Library Journal contributor David A. Berona, the author “uses an inventive style to probe fundamental questions about modern life from a variety of distinct perspectives.” In the title story, a hapless superhero named Moisture Man makes a deal with evildoers after his fellow superheroes deny his application for higher status. In “My Last Days as Me,” the star of the hit television series “Me and My Mother” rejects his new on-screen mom for being too clingy. Set one million years in the future, “Florence” posits a universe in which each human lives alone on his own planet and efforts at communicating with other people seem futile. A few of Yu’s tales experiment with form; “Problems for Self-Study,” for example, unfolds as a series of multiple-choice questions.

Reviewers offered generous praise for the collection. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Third Class Superhero“an imaginative excursion into the burrow Kafka built,” and Robert Ito, writing in Los Angeles Magazine, similarly noted that the work “reminds one of Kafka, if Kafka had had a geekish passion for science fiction and TV.” In his stories, Yu “uses language to suggest what language cannot express, as he deals with themes such as the nature of distance, the essence of time and the illusion of self,” observed a critic in Kirkus Reviews.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2006, review of Third Class Superhero, p. 601.

Library Journal, September 1, 2006, David A. Berona, review of Third Class Superhero, p. 140.

Los Angeles Magazine, October, 2006, Robert Ito, review of Third Class Superhero, p. 190.

New York Times, December 31, 2006, Todd Pruzan, “Fiction Chronicle,” review of Third Class Superhero.

Publishers Weekly, June 12, 2006, review of Third Class Superhero, p. 27.