Gene Luen Yang

October 21, 2013

Comics, Graphic Novels, and Me

A man of many talents, Gene Luen Yang is an accomplished cartoonist, high school teacher, and instructor in Hamline University’s online MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Drawing on the passion for graphic formats he developed in fifth grade, Gene has been publishing comics and graphic novels for children and young adults since 1996. His American Born Chinese (2006) was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the ALA’s Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature. Gene’s most recent graphic novels, companion volumes Saints and Boxers (both 2013), are set at the time of Chinese boxers’ uprising in 1898 and tell two parallel stories about young people caught on the opposite sides of the conflict.

View photos from Book Week 2013 with Gene Luen Yang