Wendy Law-Yone

Wendy Law-Yone is the 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). Her short stories have appeared in Grand Street and literary anthologies, and her book reviews and articles in The TLS, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and Architectural Digest.

Wendy's novels have been on the curriculum of literature, history and Asian Studies courses in universities throughout the United States. Irrawaddy Tango was nominated for the 1994 Irish Times International Fiction Prize. The Road to Wanting was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize. Awards for her writing include a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Award for Creative Writing, a Harvard Foundation Award for International Literary Arts and Intercultural Relations, and a David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship from the University of East Anglia.

Born in Mandalay, Burma, Wendy grew up in Rangoon. Her father, E.M. Law-Yone, was founder and publisher of The Nation, the leading English language daily in post-war Burma. A political prisoner under the military dictatorship of General Ne Win, Law-Yone spent the last years of his life in exile, first as a revolutionary in Thailand, then as occasional lecturer and columnist in the United States.

After leaving Burma at the age of 20, Wendy spent several years in Southeast Asia before moving to the United States in the mid-1970's. She studied comparative literature and modern languages at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg Florida, then won a Carnegie Endowment fellowship in Washington, DC, where she settled for the next three decades.

Although still an American citizen, Wendy is now a permanent resident of the United Kingdom, living in central London and East Sussex.