Kim Fay

- Pen USA
- Authors Guild

Having lived in Kirkland, Redmond, Kennewick, Wenatchee, Spokane and Moses Lake, all by the time I hit the third grade, it’s no wonder I’m most comfortable on the move. I did (or rather my parents did) manage to settle down long enough for me to attend just one high school, in Vancouver, Washington. Then off to college in Pullman (where I studied broadcast journalist but should have pursued creative writing), and where I won the Presidential Award for Fiction, judged by Ursula Hegi. My higher education out in the wheat fields of Eastern Washington was followed by five years getting a real education at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle---Balzac, Graham Greene and Muriel Spark were just the beginning.

By the time I decided to leave the store, get certified to teach English as a second language and move to Vietnam where I figured I could write a novel on less than ten dollars a day, I had already traveled the world in many ways, thanks to my grandfather, Woodrow Ethier, and his stories about life as a sailor in 1930's Shanghai; my parents' wholehearted enthusiasm (and financial support) for their daughter's voracious reading habits; and my college roommate, Bambi (yes, Bambi), who talked me into a post-college summer in Europe and created an addiction I doubt I’ll ever be able (or want) to kick.

Vietnam launched my travel writing career. Not only did it give me something to write about, it gave me venues for that writing: Vietnam Investment Review, Vietnam Today, and most importantly, Destination: Vietnam. I specialized in the Saigon art scene, touched on books and bars, and of course scribbled something about every place I went, from Dalat (home of my favorite hotel: the Dalat Palace) to Tan Hiep, a tiny village on the way to the Mekong Delta, where I slept in a thatched hut, bathed in a Gilligan-worthy shower and attended the wedding of my best friend/little sister Huong's cousin.

It’s hard to say how I ended up in L.A. … a time out from Vietnam, an outstanding writing class with John Rechy, my sister, then friendships, and now, gasp, I’ve been here seven years. As far as travel writing is concerned, L.A. has been good to me, as well. I spent four years as an editor for Gayot Publications, writing about hotels, spas, food, wine and more, and am now the series editor for To Asia With Love, whose first volume was published in 2004. Staying still also gave me the opportunity to write In Yellow Babylon, a novel about temple robbing in 1920s Cambodia. In additon, I’m co-writing the memoir of one of the strongest women I know, Duyên Nguyễn, a fine artist who fought her way out of a life of poverty and reeducation camps to become one of Communist Vietnam’s first female rock musicians.

Stay tuned ... a sequel to this writing life is in the works.