Lisa Ko

Lisa Ko was born in the mid-1970s to parents of Chinese descent who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. Raised in suburban New Jersey, she frequently went to New York City as a child to buy Chinese groceries with her parents. As one of the only children of color in her school district, she rarely found books featuring Asian-American protagonists, though she read voraciously. When she finally did come across such a novel in middle school, she was profoundly moved. Upon graduating high school, she attended Wesleyan University, where she majored in English and began reading more books by authors of color, all while writing herself. When she finished college, she moved to New York City and worked in publishing before going to California and working in film production. After her thirtieth birthday, she returned to New York and focused on finishing her debut novel, The Leavers, a draft of which won the 2016 PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. The novel was later named a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award.