The Official Bio!
Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of adult novels that cross genres and audiences, as well as stories for Star Wars, Marvel, Star Trek, and Critical Role. His original work has been nominated for Goodreads Choice, Compton Crook, BSFA, and CALIBA Golden Poppy awards, along with being featured in NPR, USA Today, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Scientific American. For younger audiences, he contributed to the award-winning middle grade anthology You Are Here: Connecting Flights and wrote the YA novel Of Sorcery And Science. He has written about geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, The Mary Sue, and StarTrek.com, and in a previous life, covered the NHL. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals.
Media Links
Literary Agent: Eric Smith, Neighborhood Literary
Film/TV: Kim Yau, Echo Lake Entertainment
Downloadable Headshot: Large, Medium
Social Media: Bluesky, Instagram (mostly dog photos!)
The Mike Chen FAQ
What's your author origin story?
I've always been a writer. When I was young, I wrote (and drew) my own fan fiction before I even knew what fan fiction was. Most of this involved crossovers between my favorite franchises, because mashing up Robotech with Space Quest made total sense in my brain.
I knew I'd hit on something when I wrote a parody of The Grapes of Wrath in my high school English class. Entitled The Oranges of Evil, it featured many moments of "skitters" and a twist ending that turned the Dust Bowl into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles origin story. I had one classmate laughing so hard, she couldn't talk for several minutes.
In college, I took creative writing alongside my "practical" engineering degree. My teacher encouraged me to “keep writing,” which I did! I took a detour from creative writing to focus on journalism (including my time covering the NHL) and technical writing, but I reached out to her when I signed with my agent, and we’ve been in touch ever since.
What are your biggest accolades?
- New York Times/USA Today/Publishers Weekly bestseller
- Nominated for Goodreads Choice, Compton Crook, BSFA, and CALIBA Golden Poppy awards.
- Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, and Booklist.
- Recognized by Texas Library Association, New York Public Library, USA Today, Amazon Editor's Choice, Buzzfeed Best Books, Apple Books, BookRiot Best Books, Readers Digest Best Books.
- Featured in Washington Post, Scientific American, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR.
How did you get published?
I went the traditional route of writing a manuscript, polishing it, and querying agents. You can learn more about my specific journey on this post. You can also see a breakdown of my query letter from me as well as my agent.
Will (title) become a TV show or movie?
I don't think I'm breaking any sort of confidentiality by saying that almost all of my work has been optioned one time or another, and they have all hit various stages of development before stalling. Which, I must stress, is SUPER COMMON in the entertainment industry. I'm not sure if anything will ever see the light of day, but I have my fingers crossed.
Are you the same dude as the other Mike Chen?
The Mike Chen Cinematic Universe consists of me, the YouTube food guy, the San Francisco politician, the college football journalist, the Boston local journalist, the comic artist, the photojournalist, the pickelball guy, my childhood dentist, and many other folks with an extremely common first name mixed with an extremely common last name. We're all different people! Someday, it would be pretty cool if we all met up, though.
Are you the same Mike Chen that used to write about the NHL?
Yes, that's me! I covered the NHL from about 2004 to 2012 for a bunch of different outlets, like Fox Sports, SB Nation, NHL dot com, Fear The Fin, and others. I retired from that to focus on geek culture writing and fiction, but I still post about hockey on social media.
What's your favorite Star Wars movie?
My stock answer is that The Empire Strikes Back is the greatest film ever made and is absolutely perfect in every way. Outside of that, my top tier is Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi (and if it counts, The Siege of Mandalore from The Clone Wars). My second tier is everything else.
Who's on your Star Trek crew?
This is very, very tough to answer and it rotates around but:
- Captain: Jean-Luc Picard
- First Officer: Saru
- Engineer: Miles O'Brien
- Helm: Erica Ortegas (I have this really bonkers idea about Tom Paris meeting Ortegas that I would love to write someday)
- Science: Jadzia Dax
- Tactical: Tuvok
- Medical: Hugh Culber
