PERSONAL STATEMENT
I write about the ways that cultural power, racism, capitalism, and nature, weave through the lives of rural Californians of color. My professional work focuses on repairing relationships between people, systems, and the land.
BIO
Amanda Mei Kim is a fourth-generation Californian of Japanese and Korean descent, who grew up on a small tenant farm in Saticoy, California. She is a graduate of Brown University (Bachelor of Arts, American Civilization) where she led the university’s first Asian American writing class, and San Francisco State University (Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing and Master of Urban Administration, Public Administration).
She has worked on two oral history projects: a history of farmworkers in Ventura County (UCLA) and the history of health science (UCSF).
Amanda is a 2022-23 Steinbeck Fellow, a 2021 Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow and a 2021 California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow. She won the James D. Phelan Literary Award (1999), was a semi-finalist for Heekin Award in the Novel (1998) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2020) and Best American Essays (2022). She completed residencies at Hedgebrook (Whidbey Island, WA), the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA) and Yefe Nof (Lake Arrowhead, CA). Her work has been published in Brick Literary Journal (2021), PANK (2021), LitHub (2021) Brick Literary Journal (2021 and 2020). She will be anthologized in Woodhall Press' "Nonwhite and Woman" in 2022.
I write about the ways that cultural power, racism, capitalism, and nature, weave through the lives of rural Californians of color. My professional work focuses on repairing relationships between people, systems, and the land.
BIO
Amanda Mei Kim is a fourth-generation Californian of Japanese and Korean descent, who grew up on a small tenant farm in Saticoy, California. She is a graduate of Brown University (Bachelor of Arts, American Civilization) where she led the university’s first Asian American writing class, and San Francisco State University (Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing and Master of Urban Administration, Public Administration).
She has worked on two oral history projects: a history of farmworkers in Ventura County (UCLA) and the history of health science (UCSF).
Amanda is a 2022-23 Steinbeck Fellow, a 2021 Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow and a 2021 California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow. She won the James D. Phelan Literary Award (1999), was a semi-finalist for Heekin Award in the Novel (1998) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2020) and Best American Essays (2022). She completed residencies at Hedgebrook (Whidbey Island, WA), the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA) and Yefe Nof (Lake Arrowhead, CA). Her work has been published in Brick Literary Journal (2021), PANK (2021), LitHub (2021) Brick Literary Journal (2021 and 2020). She will be anthologized in Woodhall Press' "Nonwhite and Woman" in 2022.