About

Born in Manila during the final years of the Marcos dictatorship, Jill is the author of Dirty Kitchen, her Filipino American food memoir of 22 years undocumented in the United States. Published in May 2025 by One Signal/Atria, Dirty Kitchen has received rave reviews, called "searing…unblinking…fierce” by The New York Times Book Review, “fiery…honest [and] eye-opening” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and “an affecting memoir” by Kirkus Reviews.

Her writing has featured in The New York Times, The Nation, British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Condé Nast Traveler, People Magazine, and The Margins, as well as in Longreads, Electric Lit, and Italy’s political magazine Internazionale, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. She was also a contributor to the USA Today bestselling book The People’s Project, an anthology curated by Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith, published by Washington Square Press in September 2025.

Her photography and film work have featured in the BBC, TIME, Eater, and Gothamist. Her short documentary film Blood + Ink (Dugo at Tinta), on legendary indigenous tattooist Apo Whang Od, was a 2017 DOC NYC Official Selection (qualifying for Academy Award consideration) and the winner of Best Documentary 2017 at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival. 

With over a decade and a half of experience as a writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Jill holds an MA in Documentary Film from the University of the Arts London (2017) and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge (2021), graduating with Distinction from both programmes. She continued as a PhD student at Cambridge, earning a place despite having no undergraduate degree. At the University’s Faculty of English, she researched contemporary Filipino American fiction by women authors, examining the ways in which they aestheticized and politicized care as a response to late American capitalism and necroeconomy. Ultimately, Jill chose to leave the PhD to write her second book, a novel.

Jill serves as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Creative Writing, teaching creative nonfiction. She also teaches and mentors writers for arts institutions such as San Francisco’s Kearny Street Workshop.

A lifelong East Coaster raised in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Jill lived for ten years in London and Cambridge, England. Now a British citizen, she currently lives in the US with her dog, Gus.

Follow Jill on Instagram.

Photo by Steven Futter, 2025