Laurence Yep's birthday is June 14th. He was born in San Francisco, the son of a father who emigrated to America from China at the age of ten and a mother who was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia. Yep's father had a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood in San Francisco and Yep says he didn't encounter the white American culture until he was in high school. Alienation is a theme that runs through many of Yep's books, whether they are historical fiction, mysteries, science fiction, picture books, or young adult novels. He published his first science fiction stories at age 18, being paid a penny per word. His first book, a science fiction novel called Sweetwater, was published when he was 23. Yep went to Marquette University and the University of California at Santa Cruz, graduating with a BA in 1970. He received a PhD from New York State University at Buffalo, writing a dissertation on the early novels of William Faulkner. He met Joanne Ryder, a children's book author and editor, while in college. They are now married and live in San Francisco. "Probably the reason why much of my writing has found its way to a teenage audience is that I'm always pursuing the theme of being an outsider — an alien — and many teenagers feel they're aliens."