Charles' first book, Third Class Superhero (Harcourt, 2006) received a starred review in Kirkus and an "A" in Entertainment Weekly. He received the 2004 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award for his story "Class Three Superhero." His fiction has been published in a number of magazines and literary journals, including Oxford American, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review and Alaska Quarterly Review, and cited for special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXVIII. , "Third Class Superhero."
In 2007, he was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of its "5 Under 35," a program which highlights the work of the next generation of fiction writers by asking five previous National Book Award fiction Winners and Finalists to select one fiction writer under the age of 35 whose work they find particularly promising and exciting. Yu was selected for the honor by Richard Powers, winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel, The Echo Maker.
Of Yu's novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Colson Whitehead, author of The Intuitionist and Sag Harbor said "This book is cool as hell. If I could go back in time and read it earlier, I would". Audrey Niffenegger, author of Her Fearful Symmetry and The Time Traveler's Wife said that "[Yu] is a tremendously clever writer, and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is marvelously written, sweetly geeky, good clean time-bending fun."
Of Yu's story collection Third Class Superhero, Kirkus Reviews said "[w]ithin these 11 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 for readers whose attention span has been conditioned more by video games than classic novels" and Entertainment Weekly said "Charles Yu's book is actually a piercing survey of American ambition, rich with humor, invention, and humanity...Yu emerges as a first-class talent."
Charles Yu graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia Law School. He was a Political intern in 1993, and has been involved in TACL as a camp counselor and mentor. He received the Outstanding TACL Alumni Award in 2008. He lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.