His fiction has been published in a number of magazines and literary journals, including Oxford American, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and cited for special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXVIII. He received the 2004 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award for his story, "Class Three Superhero."

In 2007, he was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of its "5 Under 35," a program which highlights the work of the next generation of fiction writers by asking five previous National Book Award fiction Winners and Finalists to select one fiction writer under the age of 35 whose work they find particularly promising and exciting. Yu was selected for the honor by Richard Powers, winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel, The Echo Maker.

Charles Yu graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia Law School. He lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.