Lensey Namioka worked primarily as a mathematics instructor before beginning her career as a published writer in the mid-1970s. As she once told Something about the Author, her works "draw heavily" on her "Chinese cultural heritage and on [her] husband's Japanese cultural heritage." Namioka is best known for her series of exciting, adventure-mystery books about two sixteenth-century Japanese samurai warriors and for her humorous, juvenile novels about young Chinese immigrants living in Seattle: Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear and Yang the Third and Her Impossible Family.

Namioka was born in China in 1929 to Yuen Ren, a linguist, and Buwei Yang Chao, a working mother who pursued dual careers as a physician and writer. Her parents instilled in her a love for music, making it a constant in their household--likely the reason music figures in a number of Namioka's books. As a young adult, she came...