Lisa Ko

Lisa Ko is an acclaimed Chinese American author born in Queens, New York, and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey as the first generation of her family to live in America. Her debut novel, The Leavers (2017), won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, was a National Book Award finalist, and became a national bestseller. Her second novel, Memory Piece (2024), explores friendship and community across decades in New York City, and her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and McSweeney's.