Biography

Paula Yoo is an award-winning children’s book and YA author, a TV writer and executive producer who has sold TV drama pilots to Amazon, Hulu/Onyx, and Peacock, and has written for over a dozen TV dramas including NBC’s The West Wing, SyFy’s Eureka, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle, and the CW’s Supergirl.

Paula is also a professional freelance violinist who performs regularly with many orchestras in Southern California and has toured and recorded with such national acts as Love, No Doubt, Fun, and Il Divo.

Her debut YA nonfiction book, From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement, won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Honor, and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Her latest YA nonfiction book, Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire (Norton Young Readers, 2024) features exclusive new information from her personal interviews with almost 100 sources, including activists, protestors, police officers, firefighters, journalists, storeowners, politicians, and the families of Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, and Rodney King. It has already been selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard and has received two stars so far from Kirkus Reviews and the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

Paula is a former journalist, having written for The Seattle Times, Detroit News, and PEOPLE Magazine. She is also a proud member of the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and the AFM Local 47 musicians’ union. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three cats.