ILLUSTRATION BY RACHEL IDZERDA
PROFILE
Before she was a published novelist, Jen Sookfong Lee worked in communications for a Vancouver social services agency. She left that world in 2007, but the stories of immigrant, indigenous, and vulnerable families were forever seared in her mind. Nine years later, those experiences have informed her third novel, The Conjoined, published in September by ECW Press. “It takes a while for things to percolate before I feel like I’m ready to write about them,” says Lee.