Bestselling author Lisa Ko was born in New York City, the first-generation daughter of Chinese immigrants from the Philippines. Ko was, in her own words, “a good observer and a better spy.” That capacity for discerning details and illuminating subtleties is on full display in her novels, the National Book Award finalist The Leavers and her sophomore novel Memory Piece. The story of three Asian American women in New York City from the 1980s through the 2040s, Memory Piece follows its heroines as they fight expectations to pursue creative and meaningful lives in a future radically different from the one they were promised.

“Evocative and luminous. Ko once again introduces us to people we want to know deeply, then as always, delivers that and beyond. A glorious writer.”

—Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author

In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. “Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their dreams murkier and definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves. In a story The New York Times called “socially astute and formally inventive,” Ko illuminates how connection and collaboration are central to the human condition and the power of the archive when histories are being erased. Memory Piece was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Award, listed on Barack Obama’s 2024 Summer Reading List, and named a Most Anticipated book of the year by numerous publications including The Millions, LitHub, and Bookriot.

“Imperative reading: a vivid fictional exploration of what it means to belong and what it feels like when you don’t… Ko gives us an unsparing portrait of the resilience and grit it takes to risk everything to break free of tradition and start over in a foreign land.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

A decade before, Ko was inspired to write her debut novel, The Leavers, after reading news stories about immigrant parents who were forcibly separated from their young children and, in some cases, saw their parental rights terminated—cases that remain relevant as family separation and immigrant detention continue to seize news headlines. A finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction and winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, The Leavers is a timely, compelling, complex novel crackling with narrative tension that offers “a fresh and moving look at the immigrant experience in America” (Publishers Weekly). Boldly foregrounding issues of family, belonging and identity, The Leavers has been called “beautifully written and deeply affecting.… [A] timely meditation on immigration, adoption, and the meaning of family” (The Village Voice). Author Laila Lalami, called Ko’s debut “a rich and sensitive portrait of lives lived across borders, cultures, and languages.… One of the most engaging, deeply probing, and beautiful books I have read this year.” The Leavers was named one of the best books of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, The Los Angeles Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, and many others.

In her revealing and wickedly perceptive nonfiction, Ko has explored the double standards imposed on immigrants, music and other cultural touchstones, and Asian-American political history and activism. She explores similar issues in her talks, along with the craft of writing, and the importance of searching for the “story behind the story” in the news we consume and the histories we are taught. Ko also speaks on borders, collective memory and documentation, nostalgia and dystopia as ways to reimagine the future, and art and archives as technologies of resistance.

Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. A former librarian, Ko has spoken at Penn State, Rutgers University, the Black Mountain Institute, the University of Southern California, and the Savannah Book Festival, among other places.

Ko is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds an MFA from the City College of New York and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and MacDowell, among others.

For more information on Lisa Ko, please visit her at lisa-ko.com.