Laurence Yep

Laurence Michael Yep  (; born June 14, 1948) is a prolific Chinese-American writer, best known for children's books. In 2005, he received the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal  for his career contribution to American children's literature.

Biography

Yep was born in San Francisco to Yep Gim Lew (Thomas) and Franche. His older brother, Thomas, named him after studying a particular saint in a multicultural neighborhood that consisted of mostly African Americans.  Growing up, he often felt torn between U.S. and Chinese culture, and expressed this in many of his books.  A great deal of his work involves characters feeling alienated or not fitting into their surroundings and environment, something Yep has struggled with since childhood.  Most of his life, he has had the feeling of being out of place, whether because he is the non athlete in his athletic family or because he is Chinese and once lived in Chinatown but does not speak the language.  As it says in his autobiography, "I was too American to fit into Chinatown, and too Chinese to fit in anywhere else." As a boy, Yep attended a bilingual school in Chinatown. He later entered St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco where he continued his interest in chemistry and became equally intrigued with writing.  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 a career in writing was meant to be.

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.

While working in his family's store, he "learned early on how to observe and listen to people, how to relate to others. It was good training for a writer." However, as a child, he thought of himself as a scientist and expected to become a chemist. "Like my father, I was fascinated by machines." His decision to become a writer did not come until he entered college at Marquette.

At Marquette, he met and became friends with the literary magazine editor, Joanne Ryder.  She introduced him to children's literature and later asked him to write a book for children while she was working at Harper & Row.  The result was his first science fiction novel, Sweetwater, published by Harper & Row in 1973. According to Yep, his relationship with Joanne began as friends and progressed into love (Yep, 1991).  Yep and Ryder are married and live in Pacific Grove, California.

Writer

Laurence Yep's most notable collection of works is the Golden Mountain Chronicles, documenting the fictional Young family from 1849 in China to 1995 in America. Two of the series are Newbery Honor Books, or runners-up for the annual Newbery Medal: Dragonwings (Harper & Row, 1975) and Dragon's Gate (HarperCollins, 1993). Dragonwings won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association in 1995, recognizing the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award. It won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in 1976, and has been adapted as a play under its original title. Another of the Chronicles, Child of the Owl won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for children's fiction in 1977. (The Rainbow People, Yep's collection of short stories based on Chinese folktales and legends, was a Horn Book runner-up in 1989.)

Yep wrote two other notable series, Chinatown Mysteries and  Dragon (1982 to 1992). The latter is an adaptation of Chinese mythology as four fantasy novels.

In 2005 the professional children's librarians awarded Yep the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which recognizes a living author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children". The committee noted that "Yep explores the dilemma of the cultural outsider" with "attention to the complexity and conflict within and across cultures" and it cited four works in particular: Dragonwings, The Rainbow People, The Khan's Daughter, and the autobiographical The Lost Garden.

A live-action/CGI TV movie of The Tiger's Apprentice, adapted by Finding Neverland writer David Magee, was currently being developed by Cartoon Network until it was cancelled after Cartoon Network stopped developing live-action projects. In March 2019, Paramount Pictures announced an animated film adaptation of the book with a script by Magee and a release date of February 11, 2022.

Works
Golden Mountain Chronicles
As of 2011 there are ten published chronicles spanning 1835 to the present. Here they are ordered by the fictional history and the year of the narrative follows the title; none of the titles includes a date.
 The Serpent's Children, set in 1849 (1984)
 Mountain Light, 1855 (1985)
 Dragon's Gate, 1867 (1993)
 The Traitor, 1885 (2003)
 Dragonwings, 1903 (1975) 
 Dragon Road, 1939 (2007); originally The Red Warrior
 Child of the Owl, 1960 (1977)
 Sea Glass, 1970 (1979)
 Thief of Hearts, 1995 (1995)
 Dragons of Silk, 1835-2011 (2011)

Dragon (fantasy series)
 Dragon of the Lost Sea
 Dragon Steel
 Dragon Cauldron
 Dragon War

Star Fisher series
 The Star Fisher
 Dream Soul (sequel to The Star Fisher)

Chinatown Mysteries
 The Case of the Goblin Pearls
 The Case of the Lion Dance
 The Case of the Firecrackers

City trilogy
 City of Fire
 City of Ice
 City of Death

The Tiger's Apprentice
 The Tiger's Apprentice: Book One
 Tiger's Blood: Book Two
 Tiger Magic: Book Three

Ribbons (untitled group of books)
 Ribbons
 The Cook's Family (sequel to Ribbons)
 The Amah (companion novel)
 Angelfish (sequel to The Cook's Family)

Later, Gator (untitled group of books)
 Later, Gator
 Cockroach Cooties
 Skunk Scout

Mia St. Clair (American Girl series)
 Mia
 Bravo, Mia!

Isabelle series
 Isabelle
 Designs by Isabelle
 To the Stars, Isabelle

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

Picture books
 The Magic Paintbrush
 The Dragon Prince: A Chinese Beauty and the Beast Tale
 The Butterfly Boy
 The Shell Woman and the King: a Chinese folktale
 The Khan's Daughter: a Mongolian folktale
 The Ghost Fox
 The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes
 The Man who Tricked a Ghost
 The City of Dragons

Other books
 Seademons
 Tongues of Jade
 The Rainbow People
 Sweetwater
 Hiroshima: A Novella
 The Earth Dragon Awakes: the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
 Lady of Ch'iao Kuo: Warrior of the South (part of The Royal Diaries series)
 The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: A Chinese Miner (part of the My Name Is America series)
 Spring Pearl: The Last Flower (part of the Girls of Many Lands series)
 The Imp that Ate My Homework
 When the Circus Came to Town
 Kind Hearts and Gentle Monsters
 The Mark Twain Murders
 The Tom Sawyer Fires
 Shadow Lord (a Star Trek novel)
 Monster Makers, Inc.

Plays
 The Age of Wonders
 Dragonwings
 Pay the Chinaman (one-act)
 Fairy Bones (one-act)
 HI

See also

References

External links
 
 
 The Dragon Lode: "Conversations with Yep and Soentpiet - Negotiation Between Cultures"
 

Category:1948 births
Category:American writers of Chinese descent
Category:American children's writers
Category:American dramatists and playwrights of Chinese descent
Category:American historical novelists
Category:American novelists of Asian descent
Category:Carter G. Woodson Book Award winners
Category:Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal winners
Category:Newbery Honor winners
Category:Living people
Category:American male novelists
Category:American male dramatists and playwrights
Category:American dramatists and playwrights
Category:People from Pacific Grove, California