Stacey Lee

Stacey Lee is a fourth-generation Chinese American. A Southern California native, she graduated from UCLA and got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall. Now she plays classical piano, wrangles children, and writes young adult fiction.

Under a Painted Sky is her first novel.

Recently I asked Lee about what she was reading. Her reply:

I am reading two books, which is uncommon for me, as I usually only have the attention span for one book at a time. Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906, by Barbara Berglund (University Press of Kansas, 2007) is helping me research the social landscape in San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century for the book I'm currently writing, Unsinkable Mercy Wong (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2016, in which Mercy Wong pretends to be an heiress from China to get entry into an all-white boarding school, but everything is shaken up when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake hits).

The second book is Everything Everything, by Nicola Yoon (Random House) which debuts in September, and is about a house-bound girl who is allergic to everything, but all changes when she falls in love with the boy next door. Nicola is a friend, and this book is special because it's written through a series of letters, diaries entries, and illustrations (which are done by Nicola's husband!). Also, it's a timely subject, as allergies seem more prevalent now than they were when I was a kid. It's a different world out there now, though teenagers falling in love? Timeless.

Visit Stacey Lee's website.

--Marshal Zeringue