Author and Illustrator of such acclaimed children's books as Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Year of the Dog, and Olvina Swims. She received a Newbery Honor Book mention in 2010 and an Asian-Pacific American Literature Award honorable mention in 2007.
She received her artistic training at the Rhode Island School of Design and published her first children's picture book, The Ugly Vegetables, in 1999.
She addresses the emotions of adopted children and their families in her 2007 work The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale.
The child of Taiwanese-born parents, she spent her youth in New York City. Her marriage to Robert Mercer lasted from 2001 until his death of cancer in 2007. In 2010 she married Alex Ferron; they welcomed a daughter in 2012.
She is a contemporary of fellow Taiwanese-American Writer Tao Lin.
