Steph Cha (born 1986) is a Korean American novelist and fiction writer, who has released three novels in the crime fiction genre about her detective protagonist Juniper Song: Follow Her Home (2013), Beware Beware (2014), and Dead Soon Enough (2015). Her most recent book, stand-alone crime fiction novel Your House Will Pay (2019), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery. She also co-created and co-wrote the Amazon Prime Video series Butterfly.
Background Cha was born in Van Nuys, California in 1986. She subsequently grew up in Encino, California with her mother, father and two younger brothers. She attended Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City.Id. Cha graduated from Stanford University, where she studied English and East Asian Studies, and also completed a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.
Work
Novels In 2013, Cha published her first Juniper Song mystery, Follow Her Home (2013) with Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Publishers. The book has received positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Hyphen, KoreAm Journal, and other publications.Macmillan Publishers, Follow Her Home, Macmillan The sequel Beware Beware (2014) was published the following year in 2014, also by Minotaur Books.Macmillan Publishers, Beware Beware, Macmillan The third novel in the series, Dead Soon Enough was published by Minotaur Books in 2015.Macmillan Publishers, Dead Soon Enough, Macmillan
Other Writing Cha also has published freelance book reviews and food writing for the Los Angeles Times (serving as a restaurant scout and a protégé of sorts for LA Times' Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold),Sabra Embury, THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH STEPH CHA, The Rumpus, January 2, 2015, Therumpus.net humor pieces for Trop Magazine and a short story entitled "Treasures in Heaven" in the Winter 2013 Fiction Issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books.Steph Cha, Official Site, Bio, supra n.1Steph Cha, Other Writing, Bystepcha.wordpress.com
Cha has also written more than 2,400 reviews on Yelp, according to a Los Angeles Times interview,Ivy Pochoda, Steph Cha talks about the L.A. immigrant noir of 'Dead Soon Enough', August 11, 2015, Los Angeles Times and has held the "Elite" reviewer title for more than six years in a row, according to an interview with The Rumpus.
Bibliography
Novels Juniper Song mysteries
Other novels
Short stories "Treasures in Heaven" (Los Angeles Review of Books, Winter 2013)
Awards YearTitleAwardCategoryResultRef2019Your House Will PayAnthony AwardsAnthony–NovelAspen Words Literary Prize—Barry AwardBarry–NovelDagger AwardNew Blood Dagger AwardLefty AwardLefty–NovelLos Angeles Times Book PrizeLAT–Mystery/ThrillerMacavity AwardMacavity–NovelYoung Lions Fiction Award—
References
External links Steph Cha's Official Site Steph Cha Interview in the LA Times Steph Cha Interview in The Rumpus MacMillan Author Page for Steph Cha