As a child, Lee’s mother and older brother told her stories, usually involving ghosts or tigers or vengeful spirits. Lee shared that her culture, the Hmong culture, didn’t have a written language until the mid 1900s, but even after that the practice of oral storytelling continued strong. That central friendship is between Sirscha and Saengo, who share a deep bond even before Sirscha somehow brings Saengo back from the dead. What she does remember is that she always wanted to write a good female friendship, one that “wasn’t superficial, that wasn’t torn apart for petty reasons, and to just really showcase a friendship between girls that wasn’t built on competition, but that was built on support, and love, and loyalty.” Lee shared that she began Forest of Souls for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2014, saying with a laugh, “It’s actually been so long since I wrote that first draft that I don’t remember the initial spark for the idea.” In addition to being a writer, Lee is also a self-proclaimed TV binge-watcher- she said that her current binge is The Untamed, a Chinese drama which, she declared, “I’m obsessed with. Lee is the author of Forest of Souls, the June 2020 fantasy about a girl who brings her best friend back to life and is summoned to an ancient wood to tame the long-dead souls which inhabit the trees.
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