Stacey Lee | |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | UCLA, UC Davis School of Law |
| Genre | Young adult fiction |
| Years active | 2016-now |
| Notable works | Under a Painted Sky, Outrun the Moon |
| Notable awards | 2016 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, 2016-2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, 2017 PEN Center USA Literary Award |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | |
| www | |
Stacey Heather Lee[1] is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon. Her works tend to be contemporary and historical fiction, with some magical elements.
Lee is a fourth-generation Chinese-American.[2] Her family on her mother's side originally came to America in the 1800s, but wasn't permitted to stay due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.[2] Her father immigrated to San Francisco in 1953.[2][3] She grew up in southern California and has two sisters.[2][1][4] Lee wrote her first novel when she was nine and says that she always wanted to become a writer.[1] Lee graduated from UCLA and has a J.D. degree from UC Davis School of Law.[1] She practiced law in Silicon Valley for a few years prior to becoming an author.[1]
Lee is also the legal director of the non-profit organization We Need Diverse Books and is one of the founders of the movement.[2][5]
Lee is married and has two children, a daughter and a son.[2]
Her debut novel, Under a Painted Sky, about a Chinese-American girl and an African-American girl who travel the Oregon Trail during the gold rush was published in 2016.[6] She was inspired to write Under the Painted Sky based on her complex family history in the 1800s and chose a Chinese-American protagonist who doesn't speak Chinese like her.[2] Aside from similarities in the main character's upbringing and her own, she chose not to incorporate details of her family history into the novel.[2]
Outrun the Moon, her second novel, set during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, about a Chinese-American teen struggling to escape her family's circle of poverty, was published the same year.[5] She drew on her family history again for the novel and did field research traveling to various locations in the novel, among them Chinatown and the Golden Gate Park.[3]
Her next novel, Luck of the Titanic, about a Chinese teenager boarding the RMS Titanic secretly, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act in place, was published by G.P. Putnam's Books for Young Readers in May 2021.[7]
Lee's Winston Chu Duology will debut in 2022 with Winston Chu Versus the Whimsies. The series is based on Chinese mythology and will be published under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint.[8]
