Stacey Heather Lee 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. 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. Her father immigrated to San Francisco in 1953. She grew up in southern California and has two sisters. Lee wrote her first novel when she was nine and says that she always wanted to become a writer. Lee graduated from UCLA and has a J.D. degree from UC Davis School of Law. She practiced law in Silicon Valley for a few years prior to becoming an author. Lee is also the legal director of the non-profit organization

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 ...

and is one of the founders of the movement. Lee is married and has two children, a daughter and a son.

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. 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. 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. ''Outrun the Moon'', her second novel, set during the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

, about a Chinese-American teen struggling to escape her family's circle of poverty, was published the same year. She drew on her family history again for the novel and did field research traveling to various locations in the novel, among them

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...

and the

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development ...

. 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. 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 Rick Riordan Presents is a book imprint of Disney-Hyperion (Disney Publishing Worldwide) that was launched in 2018 and is led by Stephanie Owens Lurie. The line publishes books that utilize the mythology of various cultures and countries in its s ...

imprint.

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 * 2016 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for ''Under a Painted Sky'' * 2016-2017

Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature The Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature (APAAL) are a set of literary awards presented annually by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA). The APALA was formed in 1980 "to create an organization that would address the n ...

for ''Outrun the Moon'' * 2017 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Young Adult for ''Outrun the Moon'' Nominated * 2017-2018 Missouri Gateway Readers Award for ''Under a Painted Sky''

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Stacey Living people Women writers of young adult literature Year of birth missing (living people) University of California, Los Angeles alumni American lawyers of Chinese descent 21st-century American women writers UC Davis School of Law alumni American novelists of Chinese descent American women children's writers American children's writers American women writers of Chinese descent