Ka-Yee Essoe (劉家宜), Ph.D. (Psychology, UCLA; Psychiatry Postdoc, Johns Hopkins Medicine) is an assistant professor at a small, public university at rural Maine. As a cognitive neuroscientist specialising in learning enhancement, she understands the power of stories to instil empathy, resilience, joy, and hope. She began writing novels to do just that. As an East Asian immigrant who enjoys many intercultural friendships, rich cultural diversity permeates the worlds and conflicts she crafts in her epic fantasy novels with integral love-story threads. Drawing on her personal experience and 10+ years mentoring others to navigate anxiety, disabilities, abuse, discrimination, trauma, and grief, her stories follow characters facing these struggles to encourage readers through their journeys and growth.

Her favourite writers are Jin Yong (金庸, which she would pronounce Guhm Yung) and Charles Dickens. She also enjoys the work of Agatha Christie (as translated into Chinese), Anne McCaffrey, C. S. Lewis, Timothy and Kathy Keller, and sometimes, especially on rainy days, Anne Rice and Jane Austen.

Join Ka-Yee's Reader Circle to get the three opening chapters of Time Becomes Relevant.