Shawna Yang Ryan
Born in Sacramento, California, the child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan, Shawna Yang Ryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and received an M.A. from the University of California, Davis. In 2002, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, and in 2006, she received the Maurice Prize for Fiction. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.