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Aimee Nezhukumatathil

She // Her // Hers

Poet, Essayist, and Educator

Oxford, Mississippi

A South Asian Filipina woman with dark brown shoulder-length hair and a big smile poses in a gold sparkle-filled sweater with dappled trees in the background.

Photo by Mary Russell.

“When I first started writing poems, I rarely, if ever, was exposed to any love poems by an Asian American woman — ones that included motherhood AND sensuality AND brown skin AND the outdoors, so I think a tiny part of me thought it was forbidden in some way, and when you see an absence and void of your body and your desires in American letters, what does that do to a young writer?”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of The New York Times best-selling collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. Nezhukumatathil has also written four poetry collections, including Oceanic, and co-authored with Ross Gay the chapbook Lace & Pyrite. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. She is poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club and is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. Her newest book is a collection of food essays, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.30.2025

Writing
Aimee Nezhukumatathil thumbnail

Promotional video for Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

South Philippine Dwarf Kingfisher (Ceyx mindanensis) (Excerpt)

From myths and the crackle-candy of fairy tales, I was taught to fear night. Once, a rain shower shimmered between slats on a roof during the darkest hour and soaked a woman’s nightclothes. Two months later, she found out she had a peach growing inside her and was locked in a trunk, dumped into the Aegean Sea. Another time, a woman walks by a pond at twilight and hears a heavy shuffling behind her, so she turns around and the largest swan she’s ever seen looks her in the eye and down at her breast and back into her eyes again. No blinking. And then the swan lunges forward and nips at her collarbone. 

Essay from World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.