Time: 7-10 p.m.
Cover: none
Evelyn Yee-Fun Lau was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 2, 1971. Her parents were Chinese immigrants, and they tried to raise her in a traditional middle-class way. But to her family’s displeasure, in her early adolescence she starting writing and publishing her work. As a teenager Lau resisted her sheltered upbringing. In particular she resented her mother’s obsessive control and her father’s emotional withdrawal. Finally in 1986 she ran away from home. Her first book was her diary, specifically, diary entries between March 22, 1986, and January 20, 1988. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989), adapted as a television movie, The Diary of Evelyn Lau, for CBC in 1993. In her book of autobiographical essays, Inside Out (2001), Lau states that the tumult of her early adulthood has coloured all aspects of her later life.