About

Born in Manila during the final years of the Marcos dictatorship, Jill is the formerly undocumented 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.

Jill is 2026 James Beard Foundation Book Award nominee for Literary Writing and is a 2026 Haymarket Books and Mellon Foundation Writing Freedom Fellow, selected for her work in Dirty Kitchen. 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 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, premiered at DOC NYC 2017 and was the winner of Best Documentary 2017 at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival. 

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. Her PhD work examined 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.

Currently, Jill teaches creative writing and storytelling at Harvard University’s Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health, and previously taught creative nonfiction at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Creative Writing.

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 resides, documented, in Manhattan with her dog, Gus.

Jill is represented by Peter Steinberg at UTA.
Follow Jill on Instagram (her only social media).

SHORT BIO FOR EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS:

Jill Damatac is the author of Dirty Kitchen, a Filipino American food memoir of 22 years undocumented in the United States, published by One Signal/Simon & Schuster in 2025. She is a 2026 James Beard Foundation Book Award nominee for Literary Writing and is a 2026 Haymarket Books and Mellon Foundation Writing Freedom Fellow. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Nation, British Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. She teaches creative writing at Harvard University’s Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health. Now documented, she lives in Manhattan with her dog, Gus

Photo by Steven Futter, 2025