Kim Fay

Having lived in Kirkland, Redmond, Kennewick, Wenatchee, Spokane, and Moses Lake in Washington State, all by the time I hit the third grade, it’s no wonder I like to travel. I did (or rather my parents did) manage to settle down long enough for me to attend just one high school. Then off to college in Pullman, where I studied broadcast journalism 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 foreign 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--vicariously and physically--thanks to my grandfather, Woodrow Ethier, and his stories about life as a sailor in 1930's Shanghai; my parents' enthusiasm and financial support for their daughter's voracious reading habits; and my college roommate who talked me into a post-college backpacking summer in Europe. Trips to Sweden, Holland, Singapore, Malaysia, Bali, Borneo, and Thailand followed, creating an addiction I doubt I’ll ever be able or want to kick.

My four years in Vietnam launched my travel writing career. Not only did the country 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 about every place I went.

It’s hard to say how I ended up in L.A. … a time out from Vietnam, an outstanding writing workshop with John Rechy, my sister, friendships, and now I’ve been here more than ten years. During that time I spent four years as an editor for Gayot Publications, writing about hotels, spas, food, wine, and more. I also created and am the managing editor of the To Asia With Love guidebook series from ThingsAsian Press, whose first volume was published in 2004, and which now includes volumes on Vietnam, Myanmar, Japan, North India and Cambodia.

Along with my work as an editor, I have written Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam (June 2010, ThingsAsian Press), In addition, my fabulous agent Alexandra Machinist (Janklow & Nesbit) sold my novel, The Map of Lost Memories, to Ballantine Books/​Random House. The Map of Lost Memories is about the hunt for a lost Cambodian temple in the 1920s and will be published in August 2012.

As for future projects, there are so many to choose from: a Vietnamese imperial cuisine cookbook, two new novels (one a dystopian satire, the other an exploration of Vietnam before the end of the war), and a non-fiction book of essays about love, death and turning forty. I am also 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.