Alec Ash is a writer and editor focused on China, where he lived from 2008-2022. He is a Senior Fellow at Asia Society in New York, where he edits the magazine China Books Review.
Ash is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016), literary nonfiction following the lives of six young Chinese. The book was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, reviewed in WSJ and WashPo, and featured in a New York Times interview (中文).
His second book, The Mountains Are High (Scribe, 2024), is a reported memoir about city escapees moving to Dali, Yunnan. It was excerpted at the Guardian, reviewed at The Economist and named as one of NPR's Books We Love for 2024.
Ash's articles have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, 1843 and elswehere. In Beijing he was as a stringer for The Sunday Times of London and The Economist.
Previously, he edited the China Channel at the Los Angeles Review of Books (2017-2021), founded the Anthill (2012-17), was Assistant Editor at Five Books (2010-12), and blogged at Six (2008-2010).
Born in England, Ash read English literature at Oxford University, where he edited The Isis magazine. He studied Mandarin in Beijing from 2008-10, and returned in 2012. In 2020 he moved to Dali, Yunnan province, before leaving China at the end of 2022.
He now lives in New York, where he enjoys running, jazz piano, boardgames, and writing about himself in the third person.
Twitter: @alecash
