Malinda Lo

About Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo is a Chinese-American author born and raised in the United States whose young adult novels have helped define the space for LGBTQ+ representation in teen literature. She graduated from Williams College and earned a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before pursuing a career in entertainment journalism and then fiction writing. She was a staff writer and editor at AfterEllen.com, a pop culture site for LGBTQ women, before her debut novel was published.

Lo's debut, Ash (2009), was a reimagining of the Cinderella fairy tale in which the protagonist falls in love with a female huntress. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and helped establish Lo as a pioneer in LGBTQ+ YA fantasy. She followed it with Huntress (2011) and the science fiction duology Adaptation (2012) and Inheritance (2013). Throughout her career she has co-maintained data on LGBTQ+ representation in YA publishing and has been a vocal advocate for diversity in literature.

Her most celebrated novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club (2021), is set in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1950s and follows Lily Hu, a teenager who discovers a lesbian nightclub and begins to understand her own identity while navigating the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. The novel won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Stonewall Book Award, and multiple other honors.

Despite—or because of—its National Book Award recognition, Last Night at the Telegraph Club has been banned or challenged in numerous school districts across the United States, targeted primarily for its portrayal of a same-sex relationship. Lo has been outspoken about these bans, noting that they specifically target books about LGBTQ+ people and send a harmful message to queer youth about their right to see themselves in literature. Her 2022 novel A Scatter of Light is a companion story set in the present day.