Laurence Yep

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Laurence Michael Yep (Chinese: 葉祥添; pinyin: Yè Xiángtiān; born June 14, 1948) is a prolific, award-winning Chinese-American modern author. Born in San Francisco, California, he was the youngest child of his family. Growing up, he often felt torn between both American and Chinese culture, and expressed this in many of his books. As it says in his autobiography, "I was too American to fit into Chinatown, and too Chinese to fit in anywhere else." His first writing was done in high school, for a science fiction magazine. His teacher, a priest, told him and a couple of his friends that to get an A, they had to get a piece of writing accepted by a magazine, and that's when he started to realize that writing was meant to be for him.

Yep attended Marquette University and graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He earned a Ph.D in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo.[1]

The most notable of his books is a series called the Golden Mountain Chronicles, which documents the story of the fictional Young family from 1849, in China, to 1995, in America. He received the Newbery Honor for two books in the series, Dragon's Gate and Dragonwings. The latter has been adapted into a play. Other notable books are the Dragon series and The Chinatown Mysteries. He was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 2005 for his contributions to children's literature.

Yep is married to fellow author Joanne Ryder and lives in Pacific Grove, California.

[edit] Bibliography

Golden Mountain Chronicles, in chronological order (parentheses indicate the year in which the story is set)

  1. The Serpent's Children (1849)
  2. Mountain Light (1855)
  3. Dragon's Gate (1867) (Newbery Honor)
  4. The Traitor (1885)
  5. [[D
  6. The Red Warrior (1939) (yet to be released)
  7. Child of the Owl (1960)
  8. Sea Glass (1970)
  9. Thief of Hearts (1995)

Dragon

  1. Dragon of the Lost Sea
  2. Dragon Steel
  3. Dragon Cauldron
  4. Dragon War

Chinatown Mysteries

  1. The Case of the Goblin Pearls
  2. The Case of the Lion Dance
  3. The Case of the Firecrackers

The Tiger's Apprentice

  1. The Tiger's Apprentice: Book One
  2. Tiger's Blood: Book Two
  3. Tiger Magic: Book Three

Ribbons (untitled group of books)

  1. Ribbons
  2. The Cook's Family
  3. The Amah
  4. Angelfish

Later, Gator (untitled group of books)

  1. Later, Gator
  2. Cockroach Cooties
  3. Skunk Scout

Nonfiction

  1. American Dragons: Twenty-five Asian American Voices (editor)
  2. The Lost Garden (autobiography, part of the In my own Words series)

Picture Books

  1. The Magic Paintbrush
  2. The Dragon Prince: A Chinese Beauty and the Beast Tale
  3. The Butterfly Boy
  4. The Shell Woman and the King: a Chinese folktale
  5. The Khan's Daughter: a Mongolian folktale
  6. When the Circus Came to Town
  7. The Ghost Fox
  8. The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes
  9. The Man who Tricked a Ghost

Other books

  1. Tongues of Jade
  2. The Rainbow People
  3. Sweetwater
  4. The Star Fisher
  5. Dream Soul (sequel to The Star Fisher)
  6. Hiroshima: A Novella
  7. The Earth Dragon Awakes: the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
  8. Lady of Ch'iao Kuo: Warrior of the South (part of The Royal Diaries series)
  9. The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: A Chinese Miner (part of the I Am America series)
  10. Spring Pearl: The Last Flower (part of the Girls of Many Lands series)
  11. The Imp that Ate My Homework
  12. Kind Hearts and Gentle Monsters
  13. The Mark Twain Murders
  14. The Tom Sawyer Fires
  15. Shadow Lord (a Star Trek novel)
  16. Mia
  17. Bravo, Mia!

Plays

  1. The Age of Wonders
  2. Dragonwings
  3. Pay the Chinaman (one-act)
  4. Fairy Bones (one-act)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Harper Collins, Laurence Yep Biography, accessed September 16, 2007

[edit] External links

Languages