Lo was born in China and moved to the United States at the age of three. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master's degree in Regional Studies from Harvard. She enrolled at Stanford with the intention of obtaining a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology, but left with a second master's degree. Malinda Lo was made a member of the faculty of the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2013 Writer Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, along with Samuel R. Delany, Sarah Schulman and David Groff.
Writing career
Lo began writing for the culture blog After Ellen in 2003, and at one point served as the managing editor. Her first novel, Ash, was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2009. Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second book, Huntress, was published by Little, Brown in 2011. It is set in the same fantasy world as Ash, which mixes Asian and European influences. Her third book, Adaptation, was published in 2012. Reviewers at Kirkus Reviews and elsewhere have compared it favorably to the television program The X-Files. The X-Files was also the subject of Lo's graduate research at Stanford. A sequel to Adaptation, titled Inheritance, was published in 2013. A stand-alone thriller novel, A Line in the Dark, was published in 2017 and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, Vulture, and Chicago Public Library.
Research on diversity
In 2011, Malinda Lo co-founded , a website and book tour to promote and celebrate diverse representations in young adult literature, with fellow young adult author Cindy Pon. Diversity in YA highlights books with characters of color, LGBTQ characters, and disabled characters and collects data on the number of books with diverse characters and authors that are published annually. Starting in 2012, Lo has periodically published analysis of the diversity in Publishers Weekly and New York Times bestselling young adult novels. Her 2013 analysis showed that 15 percent of New York Times bestselling young adult novels featured main characters of color, 12 percent featured LGBT main characters, and three percent had main characters with disabilities.
wrote the Riverside series, beginning with Swordspoint!
Malinda Lo contributed to Tremontaine, the prequel to the Riverside Series. The prequel was written by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, Patty Bryant, and Paul Witcover with cover art by Kathleen Jennings, and was published as a digital serial by Serial Box in 2015-2016.
Stand-alone short stories
"One True Love" in Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction, edited by Carrie Ryan, republished in Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, edited by Tenea D. Johnson and Steve Berman
"Good Girl" in Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias S. Buckle and Joe Monti, republished in Futuredaze 2: Reprise, edited by Erin Underwood and Nancy Holder
"Ghost Town" in Defy The Dark, edited by Saundra Mitchell
"The Twelfth Girl" in Grim, edited by Christine Johnson
"The Cure" in Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, Issue 6, November 2015, found online
"New Year" in All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages, an anthology edited by Saundra Mitchell, February 2018
