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Caroline B. Cooney |
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Caroline B. Cooney |
| Laurence Yep is a native Californian born in San Francisco. He attended
Marquette University, the University of California atSanta Cruz, and the
State University of New York at Buffalo where he recieved his Ph.D. in1975.
He has been a part-time instructor of English, a visiting lecturer in AsianAmerican
Studies and a writer-in-residence. His Chinese-American background is central
to the spirit of many of his novels. He comments, "Having been raised in
a Black ghetto and having commuted to a bilingual school
in Chinatown, I did not confront White American culture until high school. Approaching that culture as somewhat of a stranger, I have been fascinated by all its aspects..." All of Mr. Yep's books have dealt with the outsider. In recent years he has explored the rich mythology of China in his writing. Laurence has received numerous awards for the many books he has written. Dragonwings alone won nine awards in 1975-76, while in 1989, Rainbow People won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award. Yep says he began writing "at the age of seventeen, because I had a
teacher in high school who said that we had to get something accepted by
a national magazine to get an A. The teacher later withdrew that threat,
but the writing bug bit me. I sold my first story when I was eighteen to
a science fiction pulp magazine called World's Fifth for a penny a word,
His advice to young authors is: "..the first thing is to write about what they know. And the second thing is to try to use all their senses when they write. Too many writers just use their eyes. It's more striking if you can use smells, for instance. Try and map your world by smells. Beyond that, you have to just pay attention to the world around you, gestures that a person makes, how they change their voice." To learn more about Laurence Yep, try the following links: Laurence
Yep Interview
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Dragon of the Lost Sea Dragon War Dragon's Gate Dragonwings Hiroshima The Khan's Daughter 'Later, Gator The Star Fisher |