Lisa Ko

Lisa Ko is an American writer. Her debut novel, The Leavers, won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. She has written for the New York Times.

Born in New York City, Ko grew up as the daughter of Chinese immigrants from the Philippines in a predominantly white area of suburban New Jersey. She began writing stories and keeping a journal at the age of five, though she only shared the work with others in high school. She then attended Wesleyan University, majoring in English.