Originally broadcast at 10:30 a.m. ET Monday, July 5, 2021.

Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer whose work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards. His short story “Story of Your Life” was the basis of the 2016 film “Arrival,” and he joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to open a week on “New Frontiers” by discussing how science fiction can help readers think through the implications of ideas, and how science adds wonder to the universe. Most recently, Chiang was Artist in Residence at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study for the 2020-21 academic year. In addition to his time at Notre Dame, Chiang has also served as an instructor at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at University of California, San Diego. Chiang’s debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into 21 languages; his second collection, Exhalation, was named one of the top 10 books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review. Awards for his work include a Nebula Award for "Tower of Babylon," the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992; a Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for "Story of Your Life," a Sidewise Award for "Seventy-Two Letters,” a Nebula Award, Locus Award, and Hugo Award for his novelette Hell Is the Absence of God, a Nebula and Hugo Award for his novelette The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, a British Science Fiction Association Award, a Locus Award, and the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "Exhalation," and a Hugo Award and Locus Award for his novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects. In 2013, his collection of translated stories Die Hölle ist die Abwesenheit Gottes won the German Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for best foreign science fiction. Chiang graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science.

This program is made possible by The Ethel Paris and Theodore Albert Viehe Lectureship and the Carnahan-Jackson Lectureship.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.