Kelly Yang is the author of Front Desk, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.
Kelly’s family immigrated to the United States from China when she was a young girl, and she grew up in California, in circumstances very similar to those of her main character. She eventually left the motels and went to college at the age of 13 and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
She is the founder of The Kelly Yang Project, a leading writing and debating program for children in Asia and the United States. Her writing has been published in the South China Morning Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic.
Follow her on Instagram @kellyyanghk