Amanda grew up in a tiny Kentucky town with dreams of being a creative writer, artist, and journalist, carrying a little red notebook around to write down anything that inspired her. With dreams of writing and illustrating children’s books, Amanda began building her skills with the written word and remained creative throughout her childhood and teen years.
After winning first place in a short story contest in 2008, Amanda entered her novel, The Fireman’s Daughter, into a competition that same year and took third place. Seeing the book published gave her the boost of confidence she needed and began a journey that would see Amanda’s short stories and poetry published over 60 times in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies; two more novels, Ghosts Of The Imperial and The Darkened Mirror, were published as well. Her books of horror poetry, The Madness In Our Marrow and Tall Grass, both made the preliminary ballots for Bram Stoker Award nominations; in 2019, her short story “A Shimmer In The Parlor” was a finalist for the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, and Amanda also received her first nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. In 2020, her short fiction piece “For The Birds” took second place in the Molotov Cocktail international competition.
Amanda studied fine art for four years at Academy of Art University in San Francisco and continues to pursue many interests, including journalism; she has worked as a freelance reporter for two newspapers in Kentucky and has written for several online publications, including HelloGiggles, an entertainment and lifestyle magazine founded by actress Zooey Deschanel. Amanda currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.
Fitzroy Books will be publishing Amanda Crum’s work of middle-grade fiction, Where Wild Beasts Grow, in the spring of 2022.
