Themes in Literature/Isolation and Community/Ken Liu

Ken Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China and spent most of his childhood with his grandparents. His mother received her PhD in chemistry, and is a pharmaceutical chemist, while his father is a computer engineer. The family immigrated to the United States when Liu was eleven years old. They lived in various states before settling in Waterford, Connecticut. Liu attended Harvard College, where he studied English Literature and Computer Science. Upon graduation, he worked as a software engineer for Microsoft. He later received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2004 and worked as a corporate lawyer and eventually became a high-tech litigation consultant.

Liu also is famous for writing science fiction and fantasy fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards and top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other countries. Liu has also translated the works of multiple Chinese authors into English.