May-lee Chai is a writer and educator. She is the recipient of an NEA Grant in Literature: Fellowship in Prose. In addition to her books, she has published numerous short stories and essays in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Zyzzyva, The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine, The North American Review, and the Missouri Review. She used to be a reporter for the Associated Press.

May-lee was born in California but has lived in fourteen states and four countries. She majored in French and Chinese Studies at Grinnell College in Iowa. May-lee received her M.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University. She also completed a second Master's in English-Creative Writing at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

She once walked to Burma from Xishuang Banna in Yunnan province in China. She sat under a thousand-year-old pagoda but did not attain enlightenment. She is addicted to Korean soap operas.