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About the Author
Born on August 6, 1975, Kimberly Kocken, is an Inuit writer, artist and educator. After living in her birthplace: Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, Kimberly grew up moving between the East coast of Canada and the Northwest Territories. Once she finished high school in the North and took a year to work, she moved to Lethbridge, Alberta to attend the University of Lethbridge, and has lived there since. She is close with her only child, Mason, who was born in 1996. Then in 2014, Kimberly was married to her partner, Tom Kocken.
After graduating with a degree in psychology, and a semester-long stint at the correctional center in Lethbridge as a psychological assistant, Kimberly worked to connect adolescents and families with supportive community resources to empower her clients. After working as a child and youth care worker for at-risk youth in an outreach school, Kimberly returned to university to get her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Education. After graduating with her third and final degree in 2007, she started teaching at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute, primarily as a high school English teacher, where she has remained for the duration of her teaching career.
When she isn’t teaching, Kimberly spends her time reading and writing, cooking and baking, as well as drawing and painting. Fly fishing and spending time with her family and dogs are her most cherished activities. She spends most of her summers in the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta, where she and her husband Tom, a contractor and retired school teacher, share a house next to the Crowsnest River, where they spend most of their time fly fishing together.
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Both the Crowsnest Pass and the Crowsnest River are featured prominently in Kimberly’s first novel, The Ghosts of Lille, which was published in December 2023. Within the first few weeks of its limited release, Kimberly’s novel made the Friesen Press Bestseller List and was featured as a Staff Pick on their website.
