Ken Liu

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-11

Ken Liu, born Liu Yǔkūn in 1976 in Lanzhou, Gansu, China, immigrated to the United States at age eleven after a childhood spent largely with grandparents who instilled in him a love of storytelling. He graduated from Waterford High School in Connecticut in 1994, earned a B.A. in English Literature and Computer Science from Harvard College in 1998, and later received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2004. Before writing full time from 2017 onward, Liu worked as a software engineer at Microsoft, practiced corporate law, and served as a litigation consultant. He began publishing fiction in 2002 and became renowned for both original work and translation. His short story "The Paper Menagerie" uniquely swept the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. His epic fantasy series beginning with The Grace of Kings (2015) pioneered the "silkpunk" subgenre, blending East Asian aesthetics with technological invention. Liu is also the premier English translator of Chinese science fiction, translating Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem and editing the anthologies Invisible Planets and Broken Stars. His story collections include The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He has won four Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and three Locus Awards, and lives near Boston with his family.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Grace of Kings (2015) · The Dandelion Dynasty Core Canon
• The Wall of Storms (2016) · The Dandelion Dynasty Core Canon
• The Veiled Throne (2021) · The Dandelion Dynasty Core Canon
• Speaking Bones (2022) · The Dandelion Dynasty Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 4 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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