Kim Liao is the author of Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, published by Rowman & Littlefield. A nonfiction and fiction writer, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, The Millions, Salon, Fourth River, Hippocampus, and others. Her 2016 essay in Lit Hub about collecting rejections went viral, leading to the #100rejections challenge.
Kim was a Taiwan Fulbright Creative Research Scholar in 2010-2011, and her writing has received financial support from Harvard, Stanford, and CUNY. She has received fellowships and attended writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Jentel Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Anderson Center, and the Ragdale Foundation. She is currently working on a novel and a craft book about revision.
She has taught creative writing, including courses in memoir writing, essay writing, column writing, fiction writing, and freelance publishing, at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, Catapult, Lost Lit, and the Writing Co-Lab, where she currently teaches a popular Flash Memoir course several times a year. She occasionally takes on private memoir students and memoir manuscript consultations.
A former legal writer for an immigration law practice, she also teaches academic, technical, and creative writing as a full-time writing lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She lives with her family near New York City.