Lan Samantha Chang Channels Dostoyevsky in Her Latest Novel

Lan Samantha Chang, director of the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is an avid knitter. “I can’t stop knitting—I think it must be part of my creative process, just moving my hands,” the 56-year-old says over Zoom from Berlin, where she’s finishing a fellowship at the American Academy.

In fact, while working on her latest novel, , which took 12 years, Chang says she “knitted at least a hundred small items.” She adds, “I also folded hours and hours of origami. I took lots of walks. I think better when I’m not sitting still. These activities helped me to incubate the complete change.”