Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo is an American writer of young adult novels including Ash, Huntress, Adaptation, and Inheritance. She also does research on diversity in young adult literature publishing.

Personal life

Lo was born in China and moved to the United States at the age of three. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master's degree in Regional Studies from Harvard. She enrolled at Stanford with the intention of obtaining a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology, but left with a second master's degree.^[1] Malinda Lo was made a member of the faculty of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2013 Writer Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, along with Samuel R. Delany, Sarah Schulman and David Groff.^[2]

Writing career

Lo began writing for the culture blog After Ellen in 2003, and at one point served as the managing editor.^[3] Her first novel, Ash, was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2009.^[4] Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award.^[2] Her second book, Huntress, was published by Little, Brown in 2011. It is set in the same fantasy world as Ash, which mixes Asian and European influences.^[5] Her third book, Adaptation, was published in 2012. Reviewers at Booklist, Kirkus and elsewhere have compared it favorably to the television program The X-Files.^[6] The X-Files was also the subject of Lo's graduate research at Stanford.^[1] A sequel to Adaptation, titled Inheritance, was published in 2013.^[7]

Research on diversity

In 2011, Malinda Lo co-founded Diversity in YA, a website and book tour to promote and celebrate diverse representations in young adult literature, with fellow young adult author Cindy Pon.^[8] Diversity in YA highlights books with characters of color, LGBTQ characters, and disabled characters and collects data on the number of books with diverse characters and authors that are published annually. Starting in 2012, Lo has periodically published analysis of the diversity in Publishers Weekly and New York Times bestselling young adult novels. Her 2013 analysis showed that 15 percent of New York Times bestselling young adult novels featured main characters of color, 12 percent featured LGBT main characters, and three percent had main characters with disabilities.^[9]

Bibliography

Series

Ash and Huntress universe

• Ash (2009)
• Huntress (2011)
• The Fox (2011), short story set after Huntress, published in Subterranean Magazine, summer 2011 (Subterranean Press # 19)

Ash is also found in Love Bites 2: Arizona / Ash / Blood Ties / The Secret Circle: The Initiation and the Captive (2010)

Adaptation series

• Adaptation (2012)
• Inheritance (2013)
• Natural Selection (2013) Short story, online

Riverside series

Ellen Kushner wrote the Riverside series, beginning with Swordspoint!

• Malinda Lo contributed to Tremontaine, the prequel to the Riverside Series. The prequel was written by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, Patty Bryant, and Paul Witcover with cover art by Kathleen Jennings, and was published as a digital serial by Serial Box in 2015-2016.^[10][11]

Stand alone short stories

• One True Love (2012) in Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction, edited by Carrie Ryan, republished in Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction (2013), edited by Tenea D. Johnson and Steve Berman
• Good Girl (2012) in Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias S. Buckle and Joe Monti, republished in Futuredaze 2: Reprise (2014), edited by Erin Underwood and Nancy Holder
• Ghost Town (2013) in Defy The Dark, edited by Saundra Mitchell
• The Twelfth Girl (2014) in Grim, edited by Christine Johnson
• The Cure (2015) in Interfictionsonline: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, Issue 6, November 2015, found online^[12]

Anticipated

• A Line in the Dark (Anticipated 2018)^[13]
• A short story in Lift Off (anticipated 2018), an anthology edited by Lamar Giles^[14]

Selected nonfiction

• A letter to her sixteen year old self, in The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves (2012), edited by Sarah Moon and James License
• An article in Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World (Anticipated February 28, 2017), edited by Kelly Jensen^[15][16]

Articles and interviews

• Notes & Queries (2008-2009) a monthly column for AfterEllen.com^[17]
• Back in the Day (2005) a monthly column for AfterEllen.com^[17]
• Malinda Lo has written various freelance articles, and further articles for AfterEllen.com^[18]
• Malinda Lo has interviewed various celebrities and authors^[18]

Research

Written while working towards her M.A. from Harvard in Regional Studies-East Asia and a Ph. D. at Stanford in Cultural and Social Anthropology^[19]

• Building the X-Files: Television Production, Authorship, and Discourse ^[20]
• "Authentic" Chinese Food: Chinese American Cookbooks and the Regulation of Ethnic Identity (2001), presented at the Association for Asian American Studies, March 2001 ^[21]
• Dana Scully Uncovered: X-Files Fan Fiction and the Posthuman Body ^[22]

External links

• Personal Website
• ISFDB

References