About

Photo by Jill Damatac, 2024

Born in Manila in the final years of the Marcos regime, Jill is an ex-undocumented Filipino American-raised British writer, photographer, and filmmaker. Dirty Kitchen is Jill’s Filipino American memoir of family, food, and growing up undocumented for 22 years in the United States. Published in May 2025, 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 Internazionale, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Her photography and film work have featured in the BBC, TIME, Eater, and Gothamist, while her short documentary film Blood + Ink (Dugo at Tinta), on legendary indigenous tattooist Apo Whang Od, is a 2017 DOC NYC Official Selection and the winner of Best Documentary 2017 at 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.

A queer woman who identifies as monogamously bisexual, Jill lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their dog. Follow her on Instagram.