Lisa See

See was born in Paris in 1955, but was raised by her mother, writer Carolyn See, in Los Angeles, California. Her father lived in Chinatown and she spent a lot of time there. At her father's home, she was influenced by her grandmother (who she says appears in spirit as a character in all of her novels) and her great-grandfather, who was Chinese. See graduated with a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in 1979. After graduation, she worked as a freelance journalist and wrote for several publications, including Vogue, and was the Publishers Weekly West Coast correspondent for thirteen years. With this reputation to help her, she published her first book, On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of my Chinese-American Family in 1995. She has written eight novels since then. In addition to writing novels, See has curated and developed museum exhibits, written the companion guide for a walking tour in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, and serves as a city commissioner in Los Angeles. She was named National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese Women in 2001, and in 2017 will receive the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Society of Southwestern California. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband. They have two sons.