Mimi Lok

Mimi Lok is an English author, editor, and educator. She is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award and a Ylvisaker Award for Fiction. She is also the founder of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights and oral history nonprofit organization focusing on strenghtening marginalized communities through a book series and a national education program.[1]

Mimi Lok
Born1973
Epping, Essex
Occupationnovelist, editor, educator
Alma materSan Francisco State University
Notable worksLast of Her Name
Notable awardsPEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize
National Magazine Award
CLMP Firecracker Award
Smithsonian Ingenuity Award
Website
www.mimilok.com

Her debut short story collection, Last of Her Name (Kaya Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize,[2] the finalist for 2020 National Magazine Award, The California Independent Bookseller Alliance ‘Golden Poppy’ Book Awards 2020,[3] and CLMP Firecracker Award.[1] Some of the key themes that the author contemplates are human connection, communication and empathy.[4][5] Her work has been published in McSweeney's, Electric Literature, Nimrod, Lucky Peach, Hyphen, and the South China Morning Post.[6]

Biography

Mimi Lok grew up in Epping, a small town outside of London.[4] Her parents were immigrants from Hong Kong. Lok's father worked in restaurants and in a glass recycling factory, and her mother worked for high street fashion companies as a garment worker. The stories about life in the Chinese countryside that Lok's mother told her while she was growing up, absorbed the author's attention.[4] She got involved into journalism after a post-university visit to Hong Kong in 1997 when the sovereignty of Hong Kong transfered from the United Kingdom to China.

Lok studied visual arts before enrolling in MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.[7] After graduate school, in 2007, she volunteered as a researcher and interviewer with Voice of Witness, started by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen, and collected refugees stories for an organizations' anthology “Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives". In 2009, Lok became an executive director and launched an education program.[4]

She lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband.

References
  1. "ABOUT". MIMI LOK. Retrieved 2020-05-19.
  2. "PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection". PEN America. 2020-02-26. Retrieved 2020-05-19.
  3. "Golden Poppy Awards". California Independent Booksellers Alliance. Retrieved 2020-05-19.
  4. Das, Kavita. "This Group Shares Oral Histories to Help Readers 'Better Understand the World'". NBC News Asian America. NBC Universal. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  5. "Upending the Narrative of the Great Man of History". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-01-22.
  6. "Mimi Lok |". Kaya Press. Retrieved 2020-05-19.
  7. "Creative Writing Grad Mimi Lok is Executive Director of Voice of Witness | College of Liberal & Creative Arts". lca.sfsu.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-19.


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