Openly LGBTQ young-adult author Malinda Lo of Massachusetts won the 2021 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature for her novel “Last Night at the Telegraph Club.” Lo, who graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master’s degree at Harvard, lives with her partner in Arlington.
“It’s just so meaningful,” Lo told The Boston Globe. “I’m so grateful because I have been writing young adult books for a long time now, and when I first started there were very few LGBTQ books, and I was often the only queer author at a book event, and definitely the only queer Asian American. And now this year is amazing, it’s so different. . . . I’m so happy to not be alone doing this, and I think it really shows that young adult books have really grown and become so much more inclusive.”
Here’s how Lo’s website summarizes her winning book: “America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father–despite his hard-won citizenship–Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.”
And here is how The National Book Awards summarizes Lo: “Malinda Lo is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of several novels, including most recently ‘A Line in the Dark,’ which was a Kirkus and Vulture best young adult book of the year. Her novel ‘Ash,’ a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris Young Adult Debut Award, the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda’s nonfiction has been published by the New York Times Book Review, NPR, Huffington Post, The Toast, Horn Book Magazine, and the anthologies ‘Here We Are,’ ‘How I Resist,’ and ‘Scratch.’ She lives in Massachusetts with her wife.”
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