Stacey Lee

For the New Zealand film director, see Stacey Lee (film director).
Stacey Lee
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUCLA, UC Davis School of Law
GenreYoung adult fiction
Years active2016-now
Notable worksUnder a Painted Sky, Outrun the Moon
Notable awards2016 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, 2016-2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, 2017 PEN Center USA Literary Award
Children2
Website
www.staceyhlee.com

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.

Personal life

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]

Selected works

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]

Bibliography

Novels

  • Under a Painted Sky (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016)
  • Outrun the Moon (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016)
  • The Secret of a Heart Note (Katherine Tegen Books, 2016)
  • The Downstairs Girl (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2019)
  • Luck of the Titanic (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2021)

Short stories

  • "Land of the Sweet, Home of the Brave" in The Radical Element (Candlewick Press, 2018)

Awards

Won

Nominated

  • 2017-2018 Missouri Gateway Readers Award for Under a Painted Sky[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Author Interview with Stacey Lee!". Books Inc. - The West's Oldest Independent Bookseller. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Bookslut | An Interview with Stacey Lee". www.bookslut.com. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  3. ^ a b lynmillerlachmann (16 August 2016). "Interview with Stacey Lee, Author of Outrun the Moon – The Pirate Tree". Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  4. ^ Castellan, E. M. (2016-02-05). "A Writer in the Spotlight – Stacey Lee". EM Castellan. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  5. ^ a b "Read an excerpt and see the gorgeous cover of Stacey Lee's novel 'Outrun the Moon'". EW.com. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  6. ^ Dornhelm, Rachel. "Interview with children's author Stacey Lee". www.kalw.org. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  7. ^ "NPR Cookie Consent and Choices". choice.npr.org. Retrieved 2021-09-27.
  8. ^ "Rick Riordan on Stacey Lee's new book on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  9. ^ Tyler, Anne. "Shelf Awareness for Monday, May 23, 2016". www.shelf-awareness.com. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  10. ^ "2016-2017 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Selected » Asian Pacific American Librarians Association". Asian Pacific American Librarians Association. 2017-01-23. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
  11. ^ Lee, Stacey (2018-01-13), Stacey Lee Speech - PEN Center Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, retrieved 2019-04-10
  12. ^ "2017-2018 MASL Readers Awards Final Nominees - Missouri Association of School Librarians". masl.site-ym.com. Retrieved 2019-04-10.
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