| Steph Cha | |
| Occupation: | Writer, novelist |
| Nationality: | American |
| Education: | Stanford University Yale Law School (JD) |
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.
Cha was born in Van Nuys, California in 1986.[1] She subsequently grew up in Encino, California with her mother, father and two younger brothers. She attended Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City.[2] Cha graduated from Stanford University, where she studied English and East Asian Studies, and also completed a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.[3]
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.[4] The sequel Beware Beware (2014) was published the following year in 2014, also by Minotaur Books.[5] The third novel in the series, Dead Soon Enough was published by Minotaur Books in 2015.[6]
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
Cha has also written more than 2,400 reviews on Yelp, according to a Los Angeles Times interview,[10] [9] and has held the "Elite" reviewer title for more than six years in a row, according to an interview with The Rumpus.[7]
| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Your House Will Pay | Anthony Awards | Anthony–Novel | [11] [12] [13] [14] | |
| Aspen Words Literary Prize | — | [15] | |||
| Barry Award | Barry–Novel | [16] | |||
| Dagger Award | New Blood Dagger Award | ||||
| Lefty Award | Lefty–Novel | ||||
| Los Angeles Times Book Prize | LAT–Mystery/Thriller | [17] [18] [19] | |||
| Macavity Award | Macavity–Novel | ||||
| Young Lions Fiction Award | — | [20] [21] |