Born in the U.S. in 1952 to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She attended five colleges: Linfield College, San Jose City College, San Jose State University, University of California at Santa Cruz, and University of California at Berkeley.  She received her B.A. with a double major in English and Linguistics, followed by her M.A. in Linguistics.  She worked as a language development specialist for county-wide programs serving developmentally disabled children, birth to five, and later became director for a demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Education to mainstream multicultural children with developmental disabilities into early childhood programs. In 1981, she became a freelance business writer, working with telecommunications companies, including IBM and AT&T. 

In 1985, Amy attended her first fiction workshop at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and then joined a writers group led by author and creative writing teacher Molly Giles.  Her first story was published in 1986 in a small literary magazine, FM Five, which was then reprinted in Seventeen and Grazia. In 1987, Amy went to China for the first time, accompanied by her mother. When she returned home, she learned that she had received an offer for a book based on a submission of three short stories. The resulting book of short stories, The Joy Luck Club, was hailed as a novel and became a surprise bestseller, spending more than 40 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.  

Her other novels are The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement (2013), all New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins: Memory and Imagination, as well as two children’s books. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.  

Amy Tan was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International Orange Prize. She is the recipient of many honors, including the Commonwealth Gold Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, and the National  Humanities Award. She is a member of the  American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Amy has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagellonium, Beijing, and Georgetown both in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar. She has delivered a TED talk and spoken at the White House, appeared on the popular NPR program Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, as well as on Sesame Street on Public Television. The National Endowment for the Arts chose The Joy Luck Club for its inaugural Big Read program in 2007. 

Amy  also wrote the libretto for The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which had its world premiere with the San Francisco Opera in September 2008. Since 1993, she has served as lead rhythm “dominatrix,” backup singer, and second tambourine with the literary garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members include Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Scott Turow.

In 2016, Amy began taking nature journaling classes with John Muir Laws.  

During the pandemic shutdown, she spent long hours observing the behavior of wild birds in her backyard. Her non-fiction book The Backyard Bird Chronicles will be published April 2024 by Knopf. She serves on the board of American Bird Conservancy. 

Amy lives with her husband and their two dogs in California and New York. 

Source: http://www.amytan.net/bio.html