15 Facts About Tan Lin

Tan Anthony Lin is an American poet, author, filmmaker, and professor.

Tan Lin defines his work as "ambient" literature, which draws on and samples source material from the internet and popular culture to address issues involving plagiarism, copyright, boredom, distracted modes of reading, paratext, and technology.

Tan Lin's parents migrated to the United States from China, his father in 1948 and his mother in 1949.

Tan Lin's father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramist and former dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts.

Tan Lin's mother, Julia Chang Lin, born in Shanghai, was a poet and taught literature at Ohio University.

Tan Lin is the nephew of Lin Huiyin, who is said to be the first female architect in China.

The Lin family moved to Athens, Ohio, where in 1959, Tan's sister, Maya Ying Lin, was born.

Tan Lin is an American designer and artist who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

Tan Lin received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Tan Lin has previously taught at the University of Virginia, the California Institute of the Arts, and Brooklyn College.

The first published work by Tan Lin was Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe in 1996, a "meditation backwards", where he invented new poetry structures through the manipulation of the mechanics of language.

In 2003, Tan Lin published his second work, Blipsoak01, where he again used inventive poetry structures, this time through the abstract visual placement of words.

From January 10 to October 16,2006, Tan Lin maintained a blog, titled AMBIENT FICTION READING SYSTEM 01, of everything he read, the time it took him to read it, and the place where he read it.

Tan Lin's most recent published work, "The Fern Rose Bibliography", is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Our Feelings Were Made by Hand.

Tan Lin explored the idea of an ambient novel by highlighting how a book works and how a reader reacts to a printed object when the content itself is arguably meaningless.