| Mimi Lok | |
| Birth Place: | Essex, England |
| Alma Mater: | San Francisco State University |
| Occupation: | author, editor, educator |
| Notable Works: | Last of Her Name Voice of Witness |
Mimi Lok is a British-Chinese author, editor, and educator. She is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, A PEN America Award, and a California Book Award for Fiction. She is also the founder of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights and oral history nonprofit organization focused on amplifying marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program.[1]
Her debut short story collection, Last of Her Name (Kaya Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize,[2] and a California Book Award silver medal for first fiction,[3] and was a finalist for The California Independent Bookseller Alliance ‘Golden Poppy’ Book Awards 2020,[4] and CLMP Firecracker Award. The novella from the collection, "The Woman in the Closet" was a finalist for the 2020 National Magazine Award,[5] Some of the key themes that the author contemplates are human connection, the Asian diaspora, and empathy.[6] Her work has been published in McSweeney's, Electric Literature, Nimrod, Lucky Peach, Hyphen, and the South China Morning Post.[7]
Mimi Lok grew up in Essex, in a small town outside of London.[8] Her parents were immigrants from Hong Kong. Lok's father worked in restaurants and in a glass recycling factory, and her mother worked as a farmer, construction worker, and later for high street fashion companies as a garment worker. She got involved in journalism after a post-university visit to Hong Kong when the sovereignty of Hong Kong transferred from the United Kingdom to China.
Lok studied visual arts before enrolling in a MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University.[9] After graduate school, in 2007, she volunteered as a researcher and interviewer with Voice of Witness, a book series started by Dave Eggers and Lola vollen, and collected oral histories for an anthology "Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives". In 2009, Lok transitioned the series to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, becoming its founding executive director and launching an education program.
She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.