Ken Liu

Early life and education Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China. His mother is a pharmaceutical chemist who received her Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, while his father is a computer engineer. Liu immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. They lived in California and Stonington, Connecticut before settling in Waterford, Connecticut. Liu graduated from Waterford High School in 1994, where he ran cross-country and track. At Harvard College, he studied English Literature and Computer Science, receiving his A.B. in 1998.

After graduation, Liu worked as a software engineer for Microsoft, and then joined a start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2004 and worked as a corporate lawyer, eventually becoming a high-tech litigation consultant. He became a full-time writer in 2017. This story would later become part of the AMC series Pantheon.

Liu has said he wanted to become a writer so he could make stories that "turn values upside down and inside out to gain new perspectives".

In addition to magazines and online publications, Liu's short story fiction has been published in two collections, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), which blends science fiction and fantasy to ask questions about historiography, cultural reinvention, storytelling, and transhumanism, and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020) which explores ideas such as tradition and progress, the fallibility of memory, and the essence of what it means to be human.

He has also written for the Star Wars universe, including the novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017), a series of Canterbury-tale like in-universe legends.

Along with his original work, Liu has translated the works of several Chinese authors into English, including Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang, Chen Qiufan, Gu Shi, and Xia Jia. His translation of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin became a best seller in English. He has also worked as an editor, with two anthologies of translated Chinese fiction, Invisible Planets and Broken Stars. His latest translation is a new rendition of Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time.

Some of Liu's work have been adapted into visual media. His short story "Memories of My Mother" was the basis of Beautiful Dreamer (2016) by David Gaddie. His short story "Real Artists" was adapted into the short film Real Artists (2017) by Cameo Wood. His short story "Good Hunting", which uses steampunk to interrogate the consequences of Western colonialism and Chinese modernity, was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots series (2019). Six stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories and "Carthaginian Rose" were adapted by Craig Silverstein into the animated television series Pantheon.

His latest work is a series of sci-fi thrillers starting with All That We See or Seem (2025), featuring a young hacker named Julia Z. The series engages with the impacts of AI and its consequences on the arts, law, and other aspects of everyday life.

Personal life Liu frequently speaks at conferences, think tanks, and universities on a variety of topics related to the evolving nature of work, machine-augmented creativity, and other aspects of futurism.

Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition, his short story, "Mono no aware" won the 2013 Hugo Award, and his novella "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" was also nominated for a Hugo. The first novel in his The Dandelion Dynasty series, The Grace of Kings, was a 2016 Nebula Award finalist. The novel was the 2016 Locus Award Best First Novel winner.

Besides his original work, Liu's translation of Liu Cixin's Chinese language novel The Three-Body Problem (the first in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy) won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it the first translated novel to have won the award. Liu also translated Hao Jingfang's novelette, "Folding Beijing," which won a Hugo in 2016.

Winner 2011 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, winner, "The Paper Menagerie" 2012 Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards, Short Form winner, translation from the Chinese of "The Fish of Lijiang" by Chen Qiufan 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, winner, "The Paper Menagerie" 2012 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, winner, "The Paper Menagerie" 2013 FantLab's Book of the Year Award for Best Online Publication in Small Form', winner, "The Paper Menagerie" 2013 FantLab's Book of the Year Award for Best Translated Novella or Short Story, winner, "Mono no aware" 2013 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, winner, "Mono no aware" 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, winner, "The Three-Body Problem (三体)" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu 2015 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, winner, "The Long Haul: From the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009" 2016 Locus Award for Best First Novel, winner, The Grace of Kings 2017 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner, "Death's End" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu 2021 Locus Award for Best Collection, winner, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

Finalists and nominated 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novella, nominee, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, nominee, "The Waves" 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" and "Mono no aware" 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel, nominee, "The Three-Body Problem (三体)" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novella, nominee, "The Regular" 2014 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist, "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel" 2015 Locus Award for Best Novella, finalist, "The Regular" 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novel, finalist, The Grace of Kings 2015 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist, "The Regular" 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel, finalist, Death's End by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu 2017 World Fantasy Award, nominee, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Best Collection 2020 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist, "Thoughts and Prayers" 2026 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, finalist, All That We See or Seem