About the Author

Mieke Eerkens is a Dutch-American writer who grew up in Los Angeles. She earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Leidenin The Netherlands, and an M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from The University of Iowa. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Catapult, Los Angeles Review of Books, Pank, Guernica, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has further been anthologized in Best Travel Writing 2011; Norton’s Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts; Water’s Edge, and A Book of Uncommon Prayer, selected as a “notable essay” in Best American Science and Nature Writing, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. All Ships Follow Me, a book about her parents’ experiences in WWII and the inheritance of war trauma, was released in 2019 by Picador/Macmillan. She has taught Creative Writing at the University of Iowa, UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Amsterdam University and Leiden University in The Netherlands, and currently teaches for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and private workshops. She is currently working on a memoir about her younger years traveling with the circus.