[1] Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 2, 1971, to Chinese-Canadian parents from Hong Kong.
At the age of 13 she won a essay writing contest hosted by the Vancouver Sun, she was awarded a meeting with Pope John Paul II.
[2][3] A diary she kept from March 22nd, 1986 to January 20th, 1988 was published in 1989 as Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid[3] The book was a critical and commercial success; Lau received praise for frankly chronicling her relationships with manipulative older men, the life and habits of a group of anarchists with whom she stayed immediately after leaving home, her experiences with a couple from Boston who smuggled her into the United States, her abuse of various drugs, and her relationship with British Columbia's child support services.
[2] Lau had a well-publicized romantic relationship with W. P. Kinsella, a University of Victoria creative writing professor and poet more than 30 years her senior.
Lau lives in Vancouver, where she is a manuscript consultant in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program.