Anelise Chen is the author of the novel SO MANY OLYMPIC EXERTIONS (Kaya Press 2017) and forthcoming CLAM DOWN (One World 2025). Based on her brief stint as the Paris Review’s “Mollusk Correspondent,” the clam book looks at metaphors of shell-building and opening up in times of crisis and grief. Chen’s next project is about paying attention to nature in urban and suburban spaces, by thinking deeply with street trees, parking lot weeds, invasive species, migrating birds, and buried water ways. She teaches fiction at Columbia University, and lives in New Haven with her family.