Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which was a 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist, won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She is a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. lisa-ko.com @iamlisako