Mieke Eerkens is a Dutch-American writer who grew up in Los Angeles and The Netherlands. She earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, and an M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from The University of Iowa. She has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing and currently teaches creative writing for UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program in Los Angeles. 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; 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.