Alec Ash

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 China Books Review. He is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016, a BBC Book of the Week) about the lives of young Chinese people, and The Mountains Are High (Scribe, 2024), a memoir about city escapees moving to rural China.

Ash was born in England, and studied English literature at Oxford University, before moving to Beijing. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic and elsewhere, and was a stringer for The Economist and The Sunday Times of London. He was editor of the China Channel at Los Angeles Review of Books, contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters, and co-editor of the anthology While We’re Here.