Shawna Yang Ryan was born and raised in California. Her experience as a mixed-race Asian American, and her years in her mother's country of origin, Taiwan--including one year as a Fulbright Scholar--have influenced the major themes of her work: Chinese culture in the context of diaspora, the definition of "foreign," and the formation of cultural and national identities.As a graduate student in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Davis, Ryan spent a summer in the Sacramento Delta--in the tiny Chinese immigrant community of Locke--researching her master's thesis, a novel. First published in 2007 by El Leon Literary Arts under the title Locke 1928, it was re-issued by The Penguin Press as Water Ghosts in 2009. It was a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller, the 2006 winner of the UC Davis Maurice Prize, a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award, and long-listed for the 2010 Asian American Literary Award. Booklist called Water Ghosts "accomplished and affecting," while The Boston Globe has declared her "a writer to watch."