Malinda Lo | |
|---|---|
 Lo at the 2017 Texas Book Festival | |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 2009–present |
| Genre | Young adult, fantasy, science fiction |
| Spouse | Amy Lovell |
| Relatives | Ruth Earnshaw Lo (grandmother) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Malinda Lo is an American writer of young adult novels including Ash , Huntress, Adaptation, Inheritance,A Line in the Dark, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club . She also does research on diversity in young adult literature and publishing.
Lo was born in China and moved to the United States at the age of three. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master's degree in Regional Studies from Harvard. She enrolled at Stanford with the intention of obtaining a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology, but left with a second master's degree. [1]
Malinda Lo was made a member of the faculty of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2013 Writer Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, along with Samuel R. Delany, Sarah Schulman and David Groff. [2]
She resides in Massachusetts with her wife, Amy Lovell. [3] [4] [5]
Lo began writing for the culture blog AfterEllen in 2003, and at one point served as the managing editor. [6] [7]
She was also a contributing writer for Curve magazine from 2005 to 2007, acting as associate editor for a majority of her tenure. [8]
Her first novel, Ash , was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2009. [9] Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. [2] Her second book, Huntress, was published by Little, Brown in 2011. [10] It is set in the same fantasy world as Ash, which mixes East Asian and European influences; [11] it too was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award finalist and for the 2012 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel, as well as being judged a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. [2] Her third book, Adaptation, was published in 2012. Reviewers at Kirkus Reviews and elsewhere have compared it favorably to the television program The X-Files . [12] The X-Files was also the subject of Lo's graduate research at Stanford. [1] A sequel to Adaptation, titled Inheritance, was published in 2013. [13]
A stand-alone thriller novel, A Line in the Dark, was published in 2017 and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, Vulture, and Chicago Public Library. [14]
In 2021, Lo released the book Last Night at the Telegraph Club , following a teenaged American-born Chinese woman coming to terms with her homosexuality during the McCarthy Red Scare in 1950s San Francisco, adapted from a short story she wrote for the 2018 anthology All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories Of Queer Teens Throughout The Ages. [15] She has since written Notes from the Telegraph Club, a series of blogposts about her research for the novel, and described that she chose to use Chinese characters with footnote translations for when the characters are speaking Chinese to each other, partly because the romanization of Chinese was not yet standardized in the 1950s and "Romanized Chinese of the 1950s was for the benefit of non-Chinese Westerners, mostly white people" and partly to make clear the sense of insider versus outsider culture. [15] Last Night at the Telegraph Club was well received, with Kirkus opening their review with "Finally, the intersectional, lesbian, historical teen novel so many readers have been waiting for" [16] and Joanne Zou writing for Farrago that it "struck a very personal chord with me. It is a book full of hope and love and community and gay people, some of my favourite elements in storytelling. I am glad this book exists and it made me glad that I exist." [17] In May 2021, it was announced that Last Night at the Telegraph Club had earned Lo another ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults nomination. [18] In November 2021 her YA Novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club was awarded the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. [19]
Lo followed up Last Night at the Telegraph Club with a standalone companion novel called A Scatter of Light , which was published on October 4, 2022. [20] A coming-of-age story, it is set in 2013, during the time same-sex marriage is legalized in California, a topic which is used to connect the two novels. [21]
In 2011, Malinda Lo co-founded Diversity in YA, a website and book tour to promote and celebrate diverse representations in young adult literature, with fellow young adult author Cindy Pon. [22] Diversity in YA highlights books with characters of color, LGBTQ characters, and disabled characters and collects data on the number of books with diverse characters and authors that are published annually. Starting in 2012, Lo has periodically published analysis of the diversity in Publishers Weekly and New York Times bestselling young adult novels. Her 2013 analysis showed that 15 percent of New York Times bestselling young adult novels featured main characters of color, 12 percent featured LGBT main characters, and three percent had main characters with disabilities. [23]
Ash is also found in Love Bites 2: Arizona / Ash / Blood Ties / The Secret Circle: The Initiation and the Captive (2010)
A huntress is a woman who engages in the act of hunting. A stock character in fantasy fiction.
Ellen Wittlinger was an American author of young adults novels, including Gracie's Girl and the Printz Honor book Hard Love.
Ellen Louise Hopkins is a novelist who has published several New York Times bestselling novels that are popular among the teenage and young adult audience.
Maureen Johnson is an American author of young adult fiction. Her published novels include series leading titles such as 13 Little Blue Envelopes, The Name of the Star, Truly Devious, and Suite Scarlett. Among Johnson's works are collaborative efforts such as Let It Snow, a holiday romance novel of interwoven stories co-written with John Green and Lauren Myracle, and a series of novellas found in New York Times bestselling anthologies The Bane Chronicles, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and Ghosts of the Shadow Market.
Ash is a young adult fantasy lesbian novel by Malinda Lo first published in 2009. It is a reworking of the Cinderella fairy tale that reimagines the title character, Ash, as a lesbian teenager. The novel centers around the familiar story of Cinderella, her father recently remarried, and lamenting the misery of her new life with stepsisters and a stepmother. The twist arrives when Ash falls in love with the King's respected huntress Kaisa, after she has made a commitment to dark fairy prince Sidhean.
Hannah Moskowitz is an American author of young adult and middle grade novels.
Carrie Mac is a Canadian author of more than a dozen novels for Young Adults, both contemporary and speculative. Her latest work is the literary novel, LAST WINTER, due out from Random House Canada in early 2023. She also writes literary short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Some of her accolades include a CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, and the Arthur Ellis Award, as well as various other awards and recognitions.
Young adult fiction and children's literature in general have historically shown a lack of diversity, that is, a lack of books with a main character who is, for example, a person of color, from the LGBTQIA+ community, or disabled. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. Diversity is considered beneficial since it encourages children of diverse backgrounds to read and it teaches children of all backgrounds an accurate view of the world around them. In the mid-2010s, more attention was drawn to this problem from various quarters. In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have improved: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Dahlia Adler is an American author of young adult and new adult fiction.
Casey McQuiston is an American author of romance novels in the new adult fiction genre, best known for their New York Times best-selling debut novel Red, White & Royal Blue, in which the son of America's first female president falls in love with a prince of England, and sophomore book One Last Stop. McQuiston made their debut in the young adult fiction genre with their book I Kissed Shara Wheeler which was released on May 3, 2022. They were included in Time magazine's 2022 Time 100 Next list.
Dhonielle Clayton is an American author and chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books. She has written multiple book series, including The Belles (2018-2023). She also collaborated with Tiffany D. Jackson, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon to write Blackout (2021).
Ellen Oh is a Korean-American author, and founding member and CEO of the non-profit We Need Diverse Books. She is the award winning author of young adult and middle grade novels including the Prophecy trilogy, also known as the Dragon King Chronicles, a series of fantasy, young adult novels based on Korean folklore.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a young adult historical novel written by Malinda Lo and published on January 19, 2021, by Dutton Books for Young Readers. It is set in 1950s San Francisco and tells the story of Lily Hu, a teenage daughter of Chinese immigrants as she begins to explore her sexuality.
Adiba Jaigirdar is a Bangladeshi-Irish writer. Her debut novel, The Henna Wars, is listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best YA Books of All Time, alongside novels such as Little Women, Lord of the Flies, and The Catcher in the Rye.
Too Bright to See is a middle grade ghost novel written by Kyle Lukoff and published on April 20, 2021, by Dial Books. It tells the story of Bug, a transgender boy who lives in a haunted house, as he tries to understand a message a ghost is trying to send him.
Shaun David Hutchinson is an American author of young adult texts. His novels often "combine speculative elements with LGBT characters and themes."
A Scatter of Light is a young adult coming-of-age story written by Malinda Lo and published on October 4, 2022, by Dutton Books for Young Readers. A standalone companion book to Lo's previous novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, it tells the story of Aria West as she explores her sexuality and the LGBT culture in San Francisco.
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