Laurence Yep was born on June 14, 1948, in San Francisco, California, where his parents lived in a mainly African-American neighborhood, running a small grocery store. For his early education Yep rode the bus to a Catholic grammar school in Chinatown. During high school he developed a strong interest in science fiction and fantasy, an interest that led to writing short stories. Although he originally intended to be a chemist rather than a writer, his English teacher encouraged him to submit his stories for publication. By the age of eighteen, when he had entered Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Yep sold his first story to a science-fiction magazine for a penny a word. Yep later transferred to the University of California in Santa Cruz where he completed his bachelor's degree, then continued his studies in English at the State University of New York in Buffalo, where...