Author Bio
Kimberly Us is a writer, teacher, speaker and author of the novel Bettie Page: Aphrodite Rising. She writes about mythology, nature, and bold women who drove social change in midcentury America.
A science and English teacher for over twenty-five years, Kimberly infuses her writing with scholarship and entertaining insights. Her love of learning led to a B.S. in Environmental Science and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Her plays have been performed at UCR and her middle school. Silent Spring, about environmental author Rachel Carson, was a regional one-act finalist at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Her second play, Baja Whale Tale, dramatized the fight to save San Ignacio Lagoon, an important gray whale breeding area, from industrial development. Both plays used magical realism and talking animals to voice nature’s point of view and engage adolescent audiences.
In screenplays, Kimberly has explored the Celtic mythology of the selkie, a seal-woman shapeshifter, and the Japanese mythology of crow-goblin and fox-woman shapeshifters.
A desire to create community led her to develop an annual workshop at UCR Extension called Camp Creative: A Playdate for Women. Kimberly has been the keynote speaker and journaling workshop teacher for the past three years.
A participant of the Well Spoken Woman Program, and member of Toastmasters, Kimberly has presented at many teaching workshops. She wrote language arts curriculum for her district and won Exemplary International Baccalaureate Educator of California.
When not reading or hiking, Kimberly can be found on the dance floor taking lessons and performing Latin and Ballroom dance. A former Navy brat, Kimberly lives in Southern California with her husband and has two millennial children.