sue-lynn zan was born in Elizabeth, NJ and grew up in Edison and Ridgewood, NJ. She got closer to the pastoral life when studying at Cornell, and had her first introduction to the NYC publishing world as an intern at Sanford J. Greenburger for agents who discovered Nicholas Sparks that year. sue-lynn submitted a short story she wrote at 21 to a blind ad in the Village Voice that landed her a job interview at the New Yorker magazine office and words of praise from its staff.
After doing jobs in book inventory at Farrar Straus & Giroux in NYC and freelance journalism in China, sue-lynn completed an MFA in Filmmaking at NYU where she worked on approximately forty short film projects and exercises, and a few features, in varying roles. Many of these won awards. Previous to that she had also worked on about ten other film projects in NYC and China. Her own NYU thesis film won two awards and was chosen to open for Indiewire’s first-listed recommended feature at Slamdance 2009, allowing her to become a programmer for Slamdance in the following years. Among sue-lynn’s classmates were Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die), Maryam Keshavarz (The Persian Version) and Mark Heyman (Black Swan). In 2012-2014, sue-lynn provided blog content daily for The Colbert Report, during which time the show happened to win Outstanding Series and Outstanding Writing at the Emmys for two years in a row.
sue-lynn became an Adjunct Professor of Writing and Literature at NYC’s School of Visual Arts in 2013, then later completed a Master’s in English Literature at Columbia, where Colm Toibin sponsored her thesis, and Edward Mendelson joined as one of her evaluators. In September 2024, she completed a two-year Master’s in French Literature at Sorbonne University with a focus on 19th-20th century literature and cinema. She wrote two mémoires de maîtrise under the direction of Bernard Vouilloux and Christophe Pradeau, while Matthieu Vernet chaired her M2 thesis defense. sue-lynn hopes to publish these writings and more between teaching and developing new creative writing and feature film projects.
sue-lynn zan is the pen name of Wendy Cheng.
Recent articles:
https://www.cineaste.com/summer2020/from-minimalism-to-neorealism-boris-frumin-interview
Photo credits: Wendy Cheng
Please note that my webpage cover photo is a picture I took of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina. Bio first published here in April 2021.
