The Leavers (Ko) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Queens, New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—state of New Jersey
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University; M.L.I. S., San Jose State University; M.F.A.,
  City University of New York City College
• Awards—PEN/Bellwether Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York


Lisa is the first generation of her extended family to be born in American. Her parents are of Chinese descent who came to the U.S. from the Philippines. She was born in New York City's Borough of Queens, though eventually her family moved to the New Jersey suburbs where she grew up.

As the only Asian child in her community, Ko knows what it feels like to be an outsider, a feeling that has informed her fiction. Lonely, she turned to reading and writing for company and comfort. At five she started keeping a journal and wrote her first book, Magenta Goes to College. Magenta was her favorite colored crayon. She also read throughout her childhood and adolescence—as she says on her website, "to escape, to dream."

Ko received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. It was there that she devoured books by writers of color and finally began to write about people who looked like she did. After college she moved to New York City where she worked in book, magazine, and web publishing. Then it was on to San Francisco for five years, working in film production and co-starting an Asian American magazine. At 30, she returned to New York to continue writing a book.

It took eight-and-a-half years for Ko to write and edit The Leavers. Meanwhile, she juggled numerous jobs — from freelancing as an editor to adjunct teaching and full-time office work, writing when she could. In an interview with Flavorwire, she recalled:

I’ve had so many random writing, editing, and teaching jobs to pay the bills. I worked full-time as a web content specialist in a university marketing department while finishing The Leavers, but now I’m back to freelance writing and editing.

In 2016, even though The Leavers wasn't quite ready, she decided on a whim to submit it in a competition, all the while believing she would never win. Months later, author Barbara Kingsolver called Ko to tell her that she had had, in fact, won—the award was the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. (Adapted from various online sources, including the author's website.)