| Sue Cheung | |
| Birth Name: | Cheung Ying Yee |
| Birth Place: | Nottingham, England |
| Other Names: | Sue Pickford |
| Occupation: | novelist |
| Notable Works: | Chinglish |
Sue Cheung (born Cheung Ying Yee), formerly known as Sue Pickford, is a novelist. She is best known for her first novel Chinglish.[1]
Cheung was born in Nottingham, England, to parents who had emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1960s.[2] They ran a Chinese restaurant in Nottingham, and when she was nine started running a butchers shop in Hull. They then moved to Coventry, where the family lived in a Chinese takeaway for most of her teen years.[3] Despite her parents coming from Hong Kong, she has never been to Hong Kong, in part due to her parents’ working schedule.[4]
At the age of 16, she won a scholarship at the London College of Fashion to study to become an artist. She subsequently worked in advertising as an Art Director before switching to freelance design.[5]
Her first novel for teenagers, Chinglish, is based on her experiences growing up in the takeaway in Coventry.[6] It won several prizes, including the 2019 Guardian’s Best Books list, the ‘Simply the Book’ category at the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards, and the Young Adult category the Diverse Book Awards.