About

Tiffany Chu is a Taiwanese American literary fantasy author of stories that aim to stab your heart out with a spoon. She has been called “the queen of angsty beauty,” and writes on evergreen themes of grief, belonging, and what it means to be human.

Her work has been published by San Diego Writers, Inc., Chicago Story Press, and Renewal Missions. She is obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and reads it religiously every year. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two surviving children.

After graduating with a degree in psychology, I spent years fascinated with the human condition—how we come to believe the things we do, why we behave the way we do, and why sometimes our inner worlds are so at odds with our actions.

My writing reflects an ongoing examination of what it means to be human, in all our glorious, messed up, beautiful, contradictory ways.

I am a deep feeler who likes to pretend I feel nothing. I am a lover of books, particularly those written by authors dead at least twenty years. I am more at home among a grove of trees than a crowd of people. I live far too much in my own head. I have been described as reserved, intense, and heartless. While the facets making up a whole person change from time to time, certain core things remain the same.

I have always been fairly resilient to tides that tell me what I ought to be, but I am still a person with feelings. I am not immune to the opinions and criticisms of others. But I am also learning to treasure my own voice. I would rather have a hundred readers in whom I have found a kindred spirit, than a thousand who don’t really care about me.

Media

How to Love Your Mother (Chicago Story Press) | January 2026

When Time Opens Up (Danusia Malina-Derben, Parents Who Think) | March 2025

We Met on Substack (Diamond-Michael Scott, The Daily Chocolate Taoist) | February 2025

8 Questions for… Tiffany Chu (Eleanor Anstruther, The Literary Obsessive) | December 2024

The Untangling - An Interview with Tiffany Chu (Matthew Long, Beyond the Bookshelf) | May 2024

AI Policy

I occasionally use Claude AI as a sounding board and personal cheerleader for motivation. I explicitly instruct it not to write anything for me or make further suggestions. All words, revisions, and rephrases are my own.