Ellen Oh (née Ha) is a Korean-American author, and founding member and CEO of the non-profit
We Need Diverse Books
We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is a nonprofit organization created to promote diversity of multiple forms in children's literature and publishing, which grew out of the Twitter hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks in 2014. The organization's programming inc ...
. 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
Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults.
The subject matter and genres of YA correlate ...
based on Korean folklore.
Life and career
Oh grew up in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. She attended
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
and
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
, graduating with a legal degree. She began to write seriously after she had children, prompted by her struggle to find books that included representations for her kids.
''Prophecy'', the first book in Oh's young adult fantasy series, was published in January 2013. The series, known both as the Prophecy trilogy and the Dragon King Chronicles, draws from
Korean folklore
Stories and practices that are considered part of Korean folklore go back several thousand years. These tales derive from a variety of origins, including Shamanism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and more recently Christianity.
Many folk traditions dev ...
.
In 2014,
BookCon
BookCon is an annual fan convention established in 2014 in New York City. Taking the name format from other fan conventions such as Comic-Con, BookCon was established to combine pop culture and the book industry. Many authors, celebrities and pub ...
announced an all-white line-up for the event and hosted a children's book author panel consisting of all-white, all-male participants. In response, Ellen Oh and others in the industry created a
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
campaign under the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. The campaign, launched on May 1, 2014, gained 106 million Twitter impressions in the first 24 hours. The organization We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) was incorporated in the summer of 2014. For her work, Oh was named one of Publishers Weekly's Notable People in 2014. As of 2020, she is currently the president of WNDB.
In 2016, Oh was a judge for the
National Book Awards
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
in the young people’s literature category.
Oh's book, ''Spirit Hunters'', was started after her daughter was hospitalized due to depression. The first scene she wrote for the book was influenced by the hospital room and, according to Oh, based on "that feeling of depression and horror and sadness and fear that I was feeling and that I know my kid was feeling." The book follows a young child, Harper, and her family as they move into a seemingly haunted house. The story was influenced by
Korean Shamanism
Korean shamanism or Mu-ism is a religion from Korea. In the Korean language, alternative terms for the tradition are ''musok'' () and ''mugyo'' (무교, 巫敎). Scholars of religion have classified it as a folk religion. There is no central auth ...
, and was published in 2017.
In 2020, Oh,
Christina Soontornvat
Christina Soontornvat ( th, คริสติน่า สุนทรวัฒน์; born 1980) is an American author, educator, and mechanical engineer. She won two Newbery Honors in 2021 for the children's books '' A Wish in the Dark'' and ...
and
Melanie Conklin
Melanie is a feminine given name derived from the Greek μελανία (melania), "blackness" and that from μέλας (melas), meaning "dark".
*''Spirit Hunters'' (2017)
*''Spirit Hunters: The Island of Monsters'' (2018)
Short stories
*"The Last Day" in ''Diverse Energies'' (2012), edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti
*"Second Chances" in ''Behind the Song'' (2017), edited by K. M. Walton
*"Everly’s Otherworldly Dilemma" in ''The Hero Next Door'' (2019), edited by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
*"Kodama's Ramen Shop" in ''Fresh Ink'' (2018) paperback version, edited by
Lamar Giles
Lamar Giles (born November 14, 1979) is an American author of young adult novels and short stories. He best known for his award-winning novels with his most popular being ''Fake ID, SPIN, Not So Pure and Simple,'' and ''The Legendary Alston Boys'' ...
*"Carp, Calculus and the Leap of Faith" in ''A Thousand Beginnings and Endings'' (2018) paperback version, edited by Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman
Editor
*''Flying Lessons & Other Stories'' (2017)
*''A Thousand Beginnings and Endings'' (2018)