AAPI YA Authors

and more!

Adiba Jaigirdar Akemi Dawn Bowlan Cindy Pon Ellen Oh Hafsah Faizal Heidi Heilig Jennifer Yen Jenny Lee Kelly Loy Gilbert Marie Lu Mary H.K. Choi Misa Sugiura Rahul Kanakia Robin Ha Sabina Khan Samira Ahmed Stacey Lee Swati Teerdhala Tahereh Mafi Thanhha Lai

Young Adult Authors

Asian American & Pacific Islander

gloria chao

Gloria Chao is the critically acclaimed author of American Panda, Our Wayward Fate, and Rent a Boyfriend. When she’s not writing, you can find her with her husband on the curling ice or hiking the Indiana Dunes. After a brief detour as a dentist, she is now grateful to spend her days in fictional characters’ heads instead of real people’s mouths. Her award-winning books have been featured on the “Best of” lists of Seventeen, Bustle, Barnes & Nobles, PopSugar, Paste Magazine, and more. American Panda received four starred trade reviews, was on the Amelia Bloomer list, and was a Junior Library Guild Selection, Indie Next Pick, and YALSA Teens’ Top 10 Pick.

S.K. Ali

S. K. Ali* is the author of Saints and Misfits (Simon & Schuster, 2017), a finalist for the American Library Association’s 2018 William C. Morris award. Her debut novel won critical acclaim for its portrayal of an unapologetic Muslim-American teen’s life. Saints and Misfits was featured on several Best Teen Novels of 2017 lists including from Entertainment Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and the New York Public Library. It was also a CBC Canada Reads 2018 longlist title and featured in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, NBC News, Huffington Post, Salon, Bustle, CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, The Social, The Morning Show and other North American media. Sajidah holds a degree in Creative Writing from York University and has written about Muslim life for various outlets, including the Toronto Star and NBC News. Her second novel, Love From A to Z (Simon & Schuster, 2019), a story about finding love in the time of Islamophobia, was a Today Show pick, a Goodreads Readers Choice Nominee and on several best 2019 YA lists, including Kirkus and Entertainment Weekly’s top ten. Love from A to Z was the first YA title chosen to be part of the Today Show’s “Read With Jenna” book club. Her picture book, The Proudest Blue (Little Brown, 2019), co-authored with Ibtihaj Muhammad, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list and was featured in the New York Times, NPR, Amazon Editor’s Choice, The Today Show, among other media. Along with We Need Diverse Books co-founder, Aisha Saeed, Sajidah is the co-editor of a Middle Grade anthology called, Once Upon an Eid (Amulet, 2020), winner of the Middle East Book Honor Award and a Kirkus and School Library Journal Best Book of 2020. S. K. Ali lives in Toronto with her family, which includes a very vocal cat named Yeti.

david yoon

David Yoon is the New York Times bestselling author of Frankly in Love, Super Fake Love Song, and for adult readers, Version Zero. He’s a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Honor book recipient. He's also co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. David grew up in Orange County, California, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Nicola Yoon, and their daughter.

SANDHYA MENON

Sandhya Menon is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels with lots of kissing, girl power, and swoony boys. Her books have been featured in many cool places, including on The Today Show, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, NPR, Seventeen, Entertainment Weekly, and Buzzfeed. Two of her books have also won the Colorado Book Award. A full-time dog servant, Sandhya makes her home in the foggy mountains of Colorado. With a glass of wine at her elbow, she also pens adult romances under the name Lily Menon.

jenny han

She is an executive producer on all three Netflix films-- To All the Boys I've Loved Before, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and To All the Boys: Always and Forever. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling Summer I Turned Pretty series. Her books have been published in more than thirty languages. A former librarian, Jenny earned her MFA in creative writing at the New School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

randy ribay

Randy Ribay was born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest. He's the author of An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes, After the Shot Drops, and Patron Saints of Nothing, a powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder. It was selected as a 2019 Freeman Book Award winner and as a finalist for the National Book Award, LA Times Book Prize, Edgar Award for YA, International Thriller Writers YA Award, Amelia Walden Award, and CILIP Carnegie Medal. Randy earned his BA in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Master's Degree in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He teaches high school English in the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives with his wife and two dogs. Follow him on Instagram to see pictures of those obscenely cute dogs and on Twitter to check out what he's currently ranting about.(You can pronounce his last name correctly by saying it like REE-bye.)

trung le nguyen

Trung Le Nguyen, also known as Trungles, is a Vietnamese-American comic book artist and storyteller from Minnesota. He was born in a refugee camp somewhere in the Philippine province of Palawan.Trung has contributed work for Oni Press, Boom! Studios, and Image Comics, largely in the romance genre. His first original graphic novel, The Magic Fish, is due out October 13, 2020 through Random House Graphic, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Trung currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raises three very spoiled hens. He is particularly fond of fairy tales, kids' cartoons, and rom-coms of all stripes. He is represented by Kate McKean at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, Inc.

gene luen yang

Hi! I’m Gene Luen Yang. Thanks for visiting my site! I began making comics and graphic novels in the fifth grade. In 2006, my book American Born Chinese was published by First Second Books. It became the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award. It also won an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album – New. In 2013, First Second Books released Boxers & Saints, my two-volume graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion. Boxers & Saints was nominated for a National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Prize. I’ve done a number of other comics, including Dark Horse Comics’ continuation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender and DC Comics’ Superman! In addition cartooning, I teach creative writing through Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I teach alongside amazing authors like Anne Ursu, Gary Schmidt, Laura Ruby, Matt De La Pena, and more. In January 2016, the Library of Congress, Every Child A Reader, and the Children’s Book Council appointed me the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. We have parts 1, 2, & 3! We have parts 1, 2, & 3! We have parts 1, 2, & 3!

maurene goo

MAURENE GOO IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVERAL ACCLAIMED BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS, INCLUDING: I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED LOVE AND SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW. SHE ALSO WRITES FOR MARVEL'S SILK SERIES. SHE LIVES IN LOS ANGELES WITH HER HUSBAND, SON, AND CATS.

emily x.r. pan

Trying to get a sense of the type of writer I am? A couple years ago the New York Times had me write a short story inspired by a photo from their archives. You can read it here. That bite-sized story should give you a pretty good idea of my brand. But I guess you’re probably on this page to learn a bit more. So, uh, here’s some additional stuff: Storytelling is a thing I have loved and done all my life. I’m Taiwanese and Chinese American and my pronouns are she/her. I was born under a full moon. I’m a Dragon, a Libra sun, an Aries moon, and a Gemini rising. A few random facts: Until very recently, I believed that I hated Reese’s peanut butter cups. I love and am fascinated by bats, and one of my life goals is to become trained to help rescue them. I play bluegrass mandolin (and a few other instruments). I write in Scrivener, sometimes to a playlist I have aptly titled “ocean sounds,” other times to a playlist of singing bowls, but mostly to silence, so that I can hear myself think. In non-pandemic times I’ve also been a fan of writing to the dulcet tones of a coffee shop. In a past life I went to business school (despite being terrible at any math that is not geometry or trigonometry), and I have the scars to prove it—namely, a codependent relationship with Microsoft Excel. I also love art and crystals and cartomancy, and spend a lot of my free time training my rescue dog to balance on wobbly things. And I practice and teach a few different styles of yoga. I think I might have the slightest bit of a tendency to overuse commas and emdashes…but the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?