李敏金

Min Jin Lee (Korean: 이민진; born November 11, 1968) is a Korean-American author based in Harlem, New York City; her work frequently deals with the Korean diaspora. She is best known for writing Free Food for Millionaires (2007) and Pachinko (2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019, Lee became a writer-in-residence at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Her third novel in her Korean quartet, titled American Hagwon, was released on September 29, 2026.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1976, when she was seven years old. She was raised in Elmhurst, Queens, in New York City. Her parents owned a wholesale jewelry store on 30th Street and Broadway in Koreatown, Manhattan. As a new immigrant, she spent much time at the Queens Public Library, where she learned to read and write.

After attending the Bronx High School of Science, Lee studied history and was a resident of Trumbull at Yale College in Connecticut. While at Yale she attended her first writing workshop, as part of a non-fiction writing class she had signed up for in her junior year. She studied law at Georgetown University Law Center, later working as a corporate lawyer in New York from 1993 to 1995. She quit law due to the extreme working hours and her chronic liver disease, deciding to focus on her writing instead. She has since recovered from liver disease.

Personal life

From 2007 to 2011, Lee lived in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2012, she has resided in Harlem. She is married to Christopher Duffy, with whom she has a son. Duffy is of European and Japanese descent; his great-great grandfather is Kabayama Sukenori.

Lee is a cousin of actress Kim Hye-eun.

In 2018, Lee stated that the works that most influence her as a writer are Middlemarch by George Eliot, Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac, and the Bible.

Fiction

Short fiction

Lee's short story "Axis of Happiness" won the 2004 Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine.

Another short story by Lee, "Motherland", about a family of Koreans in Japan, was published in The Missouri Review in 2002 and won the Peden Prize for Best Short Story. A slightly modified version of the story appears in her 2017 novel Pachinko.

Lee's short stories have also been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts.

Free Food for Millionaires

Her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires was published in 2007. It was named one of the Top 10 Novels of the Year by The Times of London, NPR's Fresh Air, and USA Today; a notable novel by the San Francisco Chronicle; and a New York Times Editor's Choice. It was a selection for the Wall Street Journal Juggler Book Club, and a No. 1 Book Sense pick. The novel was published in the U.K. by Random House in 2007, in Italy by Einaudi and in South Korea by Image Box Publishing. The book has also been featured on online periodicals such as the Page 99 test and Largehearted Boy.

A 10th Anniversary edition of the novel was released by Apollo in 2017. It was announced in January 2021 that Lee and screenwriter Alan Yang had teamed up to bring Free Food for Millionaires to Netflix as a TV series.

Pachinko

In 2017 Lee released Pachinko, an epic historical novel following characters from Korea who eventually migrate to Japan. The book received strong reviews including those from The Guardian, NPR, The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Irish Times, and Kirkus Reviews and is on the "Best Fiction of 2017" lists from Esquire, the Chicago Review of Books, Amazon.com, Entertainment Weekly, the BBC, The Guardian, and Book Riot. The book was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017.

In a Washington Post interview, writer Roxane Gay called Pachinko her favorite book of 2017. President Barack Obama recommended Pachinko in May 2019, writing that Lee's novel is "a powerful story about resilience and compassion." The novel was also included on a reading list for Dua Lipa's book club through Service95 and, in May 2024, it was selected by Queen Camilla for her book club, The Queen’s Reading Room.

Pachinko was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. In August 2018, it was announced that Apple Inc. had obtained the screen rights to the novel for development as a television series for Apple TV+. The series, consisting of eight episodes, premiered in March 2022.

As of 2023, Pachinko has been published in over 35 languages.

The Best American Short Stories

In 2023, Lee was chosen as the guest editor for The Best American Short Stories, an anthology of the best 20 short stories in fiction published the previous year.

The Great Gatsby

In honor of the re-release of F. Scott Fitzgerald's century-defining book The Great Gatsby, Penguin Classics approached Lee to write a new introduction to the novel. In this piece, she reflects on the "deep moral conscience" Fitzgerald inserted into his story and frames the novel not just as a tragic romance, but as a profound ethical inquiry into the American Dream. In an article for The New York Review of Books, Lee writes that "[a]mid a life of disappointments, Fitzgerald’s novel was a crowning achievement. I turn to it because it gives me the sober wisdom to revise my own American dream." Her introduction has been acclaimed by critics for its insightful perspective on class and race.

Non-fiction

Lee has published non-fiction in periodicals such as The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine.

For three consecutive seasons, Lee was an English-language columnist of South Korea's newspaper Chosun Ilbo's "Morning Forum" feature.