Ying Ping Low (published as Low Ying Ping in Singapore) studied English Literature at the University of Leeds in the UK because she wanted to do nothing but read books all day long. She later pursued a Master’s at the University of Warwick for pretty much the same reason. While her motivations were questionable, her English degrees nonetheless came in handy as she worked for twenty years in the field of education before turning to writing full-time. She is an NIE-certified teacher (PGDE) and MOE-registered instructor.
She has published the following middle grade novels in Singapore: the Mount Emily quartet (Epigram Books) and the Prophecy of the Underworld trilogy (Penguin Random House Southeast Asia); a chapter book series, Journey to the West (World Scientific), adapted from the Chinese classic; and a picture book, Starlight in a Bottle (Marshall Cavendish), illustrated by her teenage daughter. Her novels have won the Singapore Book Awards and been shortlisted for the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award and the Popular Readers’ Choice Awards.
Song of the Yellow Dragon will be her first novel published into the US market.
While she also writes poems and short stories (“The Age When Magic Begins” won second prize in the British Fantasy Society’s Short Story Competition 2018), novels are her preferred form. She picked up crocheting just before the pandemic and has never stopped since.
About Ying Ping’s name:
In her home country, Singapore, her name is written surname first, i.e. Low Ying Ping (刘英平). Her given name, or “first name” (according to Western parlance), is made up of the two characters “英平”, i.e. “Ying Ping”. In some countries, these two characters when anglicised would be joined together (Yingping) or hyphenated (Ying-ping), which admittedly would be less confusing, since it would then be immediately clear that her first name is not just “Ying”!
Ying Ping Low 