Allison Hong Merrill

Allison was born and raised in Taiwan and arrived in the U.S. at age twenty-two as a university student. That’s when she realized her school English wasn’t much help when asking for directions on the street or opening a bank account. By recording each of the classes she took––including physical education––and reviewing the tape every night for a year, she eventually learned English well enough to earn an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. But please excuse her if she misuses the verb tenses or mixes up the genders in third-person pronouns when she speaks. It’s no secret––English is a hard language to learn.

Allison writes in both Chinese and English, both fiction and creative nonfiction, which means she spends a lot of time looking up words on dictionary.com. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her work has won both national and international awards. She is the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 MAST People of Earth writing contest, the inaugural winner of Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction, first-place winner of the 2019 Segullah Journal writing contest, third-place winner in the Storymakers Contest, a finalist for the 2019 Eyelands Book Awards, the DL Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, the 48th New Millennium Writing Award, the Serendipity Memoir Discovery Contest, Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize, and wins Honorable Mention in the 79th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Contest. She is also the runner-up in the 2020 Q2 Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest. Her work can be found in the Life Story Anthology (Taipei, Taiwan), Liahona Magazine (Taipei, Taiwan), Ensign Magazine, Flying South Literary Magazine, Dialogue Journal, Motherscope Magazine, Past-Ten Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, and LDS Beta Reader Mind Game Anthology. Her memoir, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops, is forthcoming from She Writes Press, Fall 2021. She’s an instructor at Sotrymakers Writer's Conference.

Allison is grateful to be able to live a creative life. It’s her dream come true. Aside from writing, she also models and acts for print and film. But her greatest joy is sharing her life with her husband and their three sons. The Merrills live a brick house overlooking Utah Lake. Visit her at www.allisonhongmerrill.com where you can sign up for her monthly newsletter.