Kimberly Dunham

About Kimberly

Kimberly is a YA dark forest fantasy author. She lives in the rainy Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter and has turned into a coffee snob because of it. Today, she balances writing with homeschooling her daughter and working on an English degree at Central Washington University. When she has a little downtime, which is never, she enjoys forest hikes, fawning over houseplants, trying to decorate cakes, archery, camping, and playing guitar. She has had a short story featured in the Seasons of Romantasy: Summer anthology. Her debut novel, Betwixt, is set to release in 2026.

Why Forests?

Some of Kimberly’s favorite memories take place in the forest. She grew up in Northern California, where she camped in the pine forests and the redwoods with her mom and brother and attended various church camps throughout middle and high school.

After high school, she worked on staff at a summer camp where she spent every afternoon playing guitar under the pine trees on the beach. Later, she spent a year living in a tiny mountain town. She worked in a nearly windowless office crowded with machine parts and would escape into the forest as soon as she got off work.

Today, she lives with her husband and their spunky, not-so-tiny human in the Evergreen State. They have all kinds of forest adventures together and get rained on a lot.

Writing stories with forests in them reminds Kimberly that there is beauty despite the pain and brokenness of our human lives—and that life itself is a gift and an unfolding story worth sticking around for.

Writing Journey

Kimberly started spinning stories in her head the minute she picked up the Little House series in third grade. She went on to write several short stories in middle and high school, including The Kiltman, which features a protagonist who was both a superhero and a public menace, and Princes and Frogs, a sweet allegorical fairytale about faith, love, and dragons masquerading as sheep.

Several blogs and a creative writing hiatus later, Kimberly participated in her first-ever National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) competition. She learned about plot and structure from Jessica Brody's excellent book, Save The Cat! Writes a Novel and completed the Foundations of Fiction class through Writing Mastery Academy. She continued to draft novels and hone her craft, all the while falling in love with the art of storytelling.

In 2023, she entered her novel, Betwixt, in the Aurora Contest by Realm Makers and watched it advance to the final round for the fantasy category. Betwixt is currently under contract with Quill & Flame Publishing House and is set to release in 2026.