Kim Church is the author of two novels: Byrd, a kaleidoscopic family history of a child given up for adoption, and Lena and Rae, a story of sisterhood set during the murderous North Carolina textile strikes of the 1920s and 1930s. 

Her short work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Shenandoah (Pushcart Prize nominee), The Chicago Tribune, Cold Mountain Review, and elsewhere. Her story “Bullet,” originally published in Painted Bride Quarterly, was anthologized in Flash Fiction Forward (Norton), The Great Books Foundation Short Story Omnibus, and as the title story in the Iranian collection Golouleh (گلوله) (trans. Asadollah Amraee).

Her debut novel, Byrd, won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, was a Chautauqua Prize finalist and an IPPY medalist, and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the SIBA Book Award. She has received fiction fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council and residencies at Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

A native of Lexington, North Carolina, and a graduate of UNC-Greensboro and UNC School of Law, she worked for many years as a civil trial attorney and advocate. She lives in Raleigh with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski.

“There is a strength and power in Church’s writing, and a deft and delicate touch.” —Chautauqua Prize Committee