Wendy Law-Yone (Burmese pronunciation: [lɔ́ jòʊɰ̃]; born 1947) is the critically acclaimed Burmese-born American author of A Daughter's Memoir of Burma (Columbia University Press, 2014), Golden Parasol (Chatto & Windus, 2013), The Road to Wanting (Chatto & Windus, 2010), Irrawaddy Tango (Knopf, 1994), and The Coffin Tree (Knopf, 1983).
[3] Her background is diverse, with one grandfather a merchant from Yunnan and another a colonial officer from Great Britain.
[5] In 1967, an attempt to escape to Thailand failed and she was imprisoned, but managed to leave Burma as a stateless person.
[5] She relocated to the United States in 1973, attending Eckerd College for comparative literature and modern languages before receiving a Carnegie Fellowship and settling in Washington, D.C. for thirty years.
[9] Law-Yone cites as a strong influence on her writing career her father's love of language, noting that his work as the founder of Burmese English-language newspaper The Nation was a daily factor in her childhood.