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, Bambi, 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 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, from Dalat, my favorite destination in Vietnam, 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 workshop with John Rechy, my sister, then friendships, and now, unbelievably, I’ve been here ten 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 editor for the To Asia With Love guidebooks series from ThingsAsian Press, whose first volume was published in 2004, and whose most current volumes include Vietnam, Myanmar, and Japan. I have also written Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam, to be published in February 2010, and In Yellow Babylon, a novel about temple robbing in 1920s Cambodia, which I am in the process of fine tuning with my lovely agent, Alexandra Machinist. As for future projects, there are so many to choose from: a Vietnamese imperial cuisine cookbook, two new novels, and a non-fiction book about turning forty. Lastly, I am 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.