The Author

OFFICIAL BIO

Y S Lee was born in Singapore and raised in Vancouver and Toronto. In 2004, she completed her PhD in Victorian literature and culture. This research, combined with her time living in London, triggered an idea for a story about a women’s detective agency. The result was the Agency novels, featuring the intrepid Mary Quinn.

Ying is also the author of Masculinity and the English Working Class (Routledge). She now lives in Kingston, Ontario with her family.

AND THE UNOFFICIAL BIT…
The above is all true, of course – but it leaves so much unsaid.

Things I love:
Nattering with Nick, bitter chocolate, ashtanga yoga, making my kids laugh, the colour red, unbreakfasty things for breakfast, crisp clean sheets, blank notebooks, the tock of an old-fashioned metronome, the sonnet form, wood-burning stoves, Edward Burtynsky’s photographs, Melissa Doherty’s paintings, laughing until I cry

Things I dislike:
Pomposity (great word, though), cleaning the bathroom, soggy veg

Things I’m learning to like, out of self-defense:
Early mornings (see kids, above)

My favourite books of all time, in no particular order:

The Emily Starr trilogy, L. M. Montgomery (yes, I’m cheating because it’s 3 books, not one)

Middlemarch, George Eliot

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle (and the rest of the Time Quartet)

I also blog regularly about my recent reading, using the tag “A Reader Reports”.

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