American · b. 1975
Lisa Ko writes about immigration and the families it strains. "The Leavers" (2017) follows a Chinese boy adopted by white American parents after his undocumented mother disappears; the novel tracks his search for her and for himself across two continents. Ko won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction addressing social justice. Her work examines belonging—who gets to stay, who gets to claim an identity, what is lost in the crossing.