Lowry Pei has written five novels and half a dozen short stories. His short stories have appeared in the Ohio Review, Story Quarterly, Stories, the now-defunct Writer's Barbecue, Imagine, The Best American Short Stories of 1984, and Edges, a science fiction anthology edited by Ursula K. LeGuin and Virginia Kidd. Of his novels, he is currently seeking a publisher for two of them, The Persistence of Desire and a novel he completed while on a recent sabbatical in which all the characters are seventeen.

While Pei writes about young adults and the issues that concern them, he resists categorizing Family Resemblances, or any other author's work, as a "young adult" novel, finding this label an "artificial. . . commercial making of product," potentially harmful to the work and the reader. He feels that an intelligent, well-written book will attract an audience whatever its subject matter. In talks...