Stacey Heather Lee[1] is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon.
[2] Her family on her mother's side originally came to America in the 1800s, but wasn't permitted to stay due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.
[6] She was inspired to write Under the Painted Sky based on her complex family history in the 1800s and chose a Chinese-American protagonist who doesn't speak Chinese like her.
[2] Aside from similarities in the main character's upbringing and her own, she chose not to incorporate details of her family history into the novel.
[2] Outrun the Moon, her second novel, set during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, about a Chinese-American teen struggling to escape her family's circle of poverty, was published the same year.