Janie Kim was born and raised in San Diego, California. She studied molecular biology at Princeton University, went on a Fulbright research grant to Denmark, and is now a biology PhD student at Stanford University. She studies fun-sized sea creatures.
Praise for We Carry the Sea in Our Hands: “Abby's yearning promises intriguing tension and delivers emotional rewards, most particularly about creating—and preserving—families.” —Shelf Awareness “We Carry the Sea in Our Hands is a brilliant accomplishment, beautifully composed, stylistically inventive, conceptually imaginative and original. . . . it is a complex, layered text in which present action is braided together with a poignant backstory of quarrelsome adoptive parents, loving surrogate parents, and an intense friendship.” —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times bestselling author of Blonde “In these pages, Janie Kim has set off a dazzling chemical reaction. Lyrical, perceptive, and sparking with intelligence, We Carry the Sea in Our Hands is a wholly original investigation into the origins of the self. A marvelous, moving debut.” —Kirstin Valdez Quade, award-winning author of Night at the Fiestas and The Five Wounds “Janie Kim’s We Carry the Sea in our Hands is a brilliant, poetic dance between the worlds of art and science that explores a young woman’s coming of age/coming to consciousness. In this deftly articulate first novel, Kim explores intimate and essential questions about family, identity, biological imperative, and the mythology of the self. A braided narrative that brings together science, nature, and grief, We Carry the Sea in Our Hands is a haunting celebration of the preciousness of life and our relationships to both what is known and what remains mysterious within us and within the world around us.” —A. M. Homes, author of The Unfolding