The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Author

On May 4, 1958, Kim Edwards was born in Killeen Texas but grew up in Skaneateles, New York. She graduated from Colgate University where she wrote “The Way It Felt to Be Falling,” her first short story. She received an MFA in fiction and an MA in linguistics from the University of Iowa. Afterwards she and her husband moved to Asia to teach for five years. While in Asia, she began publishing short stories (eNotes Publishing).

In 1990, Edwards won the Nelson Algren Award for her story “Sky Juice.” Her stories and essays have been published in several periodicals such as Antaeus, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Story, and Zoetrope (“Kim Edwards”). She has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania and Kentucky Arts Councils. She has also received the National Magazine Award for Excellence in Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, and other awards and honors. Her work has been included in The Best American Short Stories and the Symphony Space program “Selected Shorts.” The Secrets of a Fire King, her short story collection, was on the short list for the 1990 PEN/Hemingway Award (“Bio”). In 2002, she received a Whiting Writers’ Award (“Kim Edwards”). Edwards’ first novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, won a Barnes and Noble Discover Award, the British Book Award, and the 2005 Kentucky Literary Award for fiction. The Lake of Dreams, her second novel, was an Independent Booksellers pick and was an international best seller (“Bio”).