Stacey Lee is the New York Times and Indie bestselling author of historical and contemporary young adult fiction, including The Downstairs Girl, a Reese’s Book Club YA pick, Luck of the Titanic, which received five starred reviews, and her forthcoming gothic mystery, Heiress of Nowhere, which Booklist called ‘an exceptional novel.’ A native of southern California and fourth-generation Chinese American, she practiced law for several years before retiring to start her real job writing books. Her books have been published in over a dozen countries and have won the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association award, the PEN Center award for best YA, the Northern California Book Award, and the Golden Poppy Award and appeared on Cosmopolitan‘s Best YA Books of All Time, and Parade Magazine‘s Best YA, among others. She is a co-founder of the We Need Diverse Books movement and writes stories for all kids (even the ones who look like adults).
Stacey loves board games, has perfect pitch, and through some mutant gene, can smell musical notes through her nose. We spoke with Stacey about the inspiration behind her latest historical YA novel, Heiress of Nowhere.
What drew you to write a story about inheritance, identity, and how a single twist of fate can upend a person’s entire life?
I’m endlessly fascinated by the idea that our very existence begins with a twist of fate—of all the cells that might have divided, we are the ones who came into being. And with that existence comes everything else: the station we’re born into, the country that shapes us, the invisible privileges or burdens we inherit without ever asking for them. I often think about how one person’s life can look completely different from their neighbor’s simply because of the randomness of birth and circumstance.
That’s the kind of inheritance I wanted to explore—not just wealth, but legacy, and all the things passed down to us without our consent. Lucy’s story begins with a single, almost absurd twist of fate—an orphan girl made heiress to an empire—and from there, she has to decide whether she’ll let that define her or redefine it on her own terms. At its heart, Heiress of Nowhere is about how easily our lives can be changed by forces outside our control, and how much courage it takes to claim your own story once the world starts calling you by a new name.
Heiress of Nowhere blends gothic mystery, folklore, and harsh social realism. What challenges and creative opportunities came with mixing those worlds?
That balance was one of the most exciting parts of writing the book. I wanted the story to feel grounded in real 1918 life—the class divides, the gender expectations, the aftermath of war—while also leaving room for the uncanny. Folklore, to me, isn’t separate from history; it’s how people explained the things that couldn’t otherwise be understood.
The challenge was making the supernatural elements feel believable—as if the island itself might breathe or whisper if you just stood still long enough. But those touches of the mystical allowed me to heighten the emotions and the sense of isolation. In the gothic tradition, the line between what’s real and what’s imagined is where truth often hides.
Lucy longs for more—education, escape, autonomy. How does she reflect themes of agency and self-determination, especially in a rigid time?
Lucy’s yearning for agency is really the heartbeat of the story. She’s been raised to serve, to stay small, and yet she has this restless, searching spirit that refuses to settle. Her desire for knowledge—her insistence on understanding the world beyond her narrow station—felt radical for the time, and deeply relatable now.
In many ways, her journey mirrors what so many women experience: being told who you are and what your limits should be, then deciding to test those limits anyway. Lucy may start as someone with no roots and no power, but she learns that self-determination is its own kind of inheritance.
How did you research and imagine life on a secluded Pacific Northwest island in 1918, especially through Lucy’s lens?
I combined traditional research—archival work, old maps, and maritime histories—with time spent on Orcas Island itself. I spoke with local historians, naturalists, and artists, hiked the forests, rode ferries, watched the fog collect. I wanted to understand how isolation shapes daily life—how weather, distance, and the sea dictate what’s possible.
Writing through Lucy’s eyes meant imagining what it’s like to see all that beauty but never feel entirely part of it. She’s caught between worlds—both insider and outsider—and that perspective let me explore the contradictions of the era: progress shadowed by prejudice, community bound by suspicion.
The setting—the sea, the island, the wildlife—feels almost alive. What role does the natural environment play in the story?
The island is practically another character. Its moods—foggy, sunlit, storm-swept—mirror Lucy’s own emotional landscape. The sea, especially, represents both danger and possibility; it’s where she comes from and what constantly calls her back.
I wanted the environment to feel inescapable, like something that shapes everyone who lives there. The orcas, the seabirds, even the changing tides all act as symbols of connection—reminding Lucy that, like the island itself, she exists in a delicate balance between solitude and belonging.
What were the biggest creative risks or surprises writing this gothic mystery compared to your earlier work? What do you hope readers take away?
This was my first time leaning fully into gothic territory, so I had to trust atmosphere as much as plot—to let silence and tension do some of the storytelling. I also allowed myself to play more with the supernatural, which felt risky but freeing.
What surprised me most was realizing that a touch of humor could live comfortably inside a gothic story. I naturally write with a bit of wit, but I’d always heard that gothic fiction wasn’t “supposed” to be funny. So I assumed I’d have to rein that in. Instead, the opposite happened—those flickers of humor felt right for Lucy, and they added a kind of emotional buoyancy that made the darker moments land even more deeply.
I hope readers come away feeling both haunted and hopeful—that Heiress of Nowhere makes them think about how identity can be both a mystery to solve and a gift to claim, and how connection—to people, to place, to purpose—is what ultimately saves us.
INTERVIEW: YA SH3LF