叶祥添

叶祥添（英语：Laurence Michael Yep，1948年6月14日—），出生于美国旧金山，祖籍中国广东台山，美国华裔作家。

生平

1948年出生于旧金山华埠，高中毕业后入读于马凯特大学新闻系，后转至加州大学圣克鲁兹分校。1975年获纽约州立大学水牛城分校英国文学博士学位。此后从事写作，他曾创作过写实小说、科幻小说、民间故事等多种题材的作品，以其对儿童文学的贡献而知名。他还曾在加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校任教，教授亚美文学与写作。

著作

他的代表作为《金山记事》（Golden Mountain Chronicles）系列，讲述了一个家族跨中美两国的百年家族史。

荣誉

他获得过纽伯瑞儿童文学奖、波士顿环球报号角书奖（Boston Globe-Horn Book Award）、萝拉·英格斯·怀德奖等众多奖项。

Laurence Michael Yep (simplified Chinese: 叶祥添; traditional Chinese: 葉祥添; pinyin: Yè Xiángtiān; Jyutping: Jip6 Coeng4 Tim1; born June 14, 1948) is an American writer. He is known for his children's books, having won the Newbery Honor twice for his Golden Mountain series. In 2005, he received the Children's Literature Legacy Award for his career contribution to American children's literature.

Life, education, and career

Yep was born in San Francisco, California, in Chinatown to Thomas (Gim Lew) Yep and Franche Lee Yep. His father was a first-generation American born in China who had moved to San Francisco as a boy. His mother was a second-generation Chinese American, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family ran a Chinese laundry. After struggling through the Great Depression, Yep's family moved to a multicultural but predominantly African-American neighborhood. Yep grew up working in the family grocery store, where he recalls learning early on "how to observe and listen to people, how to relate to others. It was good training for a writer."

Yep was named by his older brother Thomas, who had just been studying the biography of Saint Lawrence for school. He spent his early childhood commuting from his neighborhood to a Catholic school in Chinatown for Chinese children, where he was often made fun of by the mostly bilingual students for only knowing how to speak English.

Not until high school when Yep attended a less segregated Catholic school did he confront white American culture in person, having grown up among Black and Chinese kids. Although he had always been interested in science, at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, he also became interested in literature and creative writing. Yep published his first story in a science fiction magazine at the age of 18 while still in high school. His English teacher, a Jesuit priest, motivated him to submit his story to magazines until it got published if he wanted to get an A grade. This experience inspired Yep to first consider what a career in writing might be like, even though he had always been fascinated with machines and wanted to become a chemist.

Yep graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 1966.

His decision to become a writer did not come until he entered college at Marquette University. There he became friends with a literary magazine editor, Joanne Ryder, whom he eventually married. She introduced him to children's literature and later encouraged him to write a book for children while she was working at Harper & Row. The result was his first science fiction novel for teens entitled Sweetwater, published by Harper & Row in 1973. After two years at Marquette, Yep transferred to UC Santa Cruz where he earned a BA in 1970. He later earned a PhD in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Writing career

Growing up, Yep often felt torn between mainstream American culture and his Chinese roots, a theme he has often written about. A great deal of his work involves characters feeling alienated or not fitting into their environment, something Yep has said he struggled with since childhood: "I was too American to fit into Chinatown, and too Chinese to fit in anywhere else."

During his writing career, Yep also taught creative writing and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara.