About.
Bio
Gail Vida Hamburg is an award-winning American journalist and author. A diasporic Christian Indian born in Malaysia, she spent her early years in England before migrating to the U.S., first to New York and then to Chicago, where she developed a career in mass communications, journalism, media relations, museum storytelling, and academia.
Hamburg's first novel, The Edge of the World, about the impact of American foreign policy on individual lives -- inspired by Graham Greene's The Quiet American -- was released in 2007 by Mirare Press, the boutique publisher for politically inspired and socially engaged writers that she helped found. The novel was featured at the Graham Greene Festival and in Bertrand Russell’s The Spokesman, and nominated for the 2008 James Fenimore Cooper Prize by the American Society of Historians. It is a frequent text in university post-colonial studies, war studies, and creative writing programs in the U.S.
Her novel, Liberty Landing, (Mirare Press, 2018), the first in a trilogy about the American Experiment and Experience was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, recognized at the Palestine Book Awards, and nominated for the Dayton Literary International Peace Prize among others. Her film writing includes The Journey Home, a screenplay about African-Americans in self-imposed exile from America, and a print story adapted for a 2001 produced-not released film Mesmerized, by the late director Jiri Weiss--a leading figure in Czechoslovakia’s post-war cinema--starring Mia Farrow and Klaus Marie Brandauer. She is currently working on several TV projects based on acquired life story and film adaptation rights.
Her theater work includes the forthcoming Hush, a political rock musical featuring the music of Chicago indie rock band, Clara May; the story book for Hurricane, the Broadway-bound musical based on the life of African American boxer, Rubin Hurricane Carter, and The Urn - a forthcoming play.
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Education
Hamburg studied mass communications at college in the UK and holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, Vermont, USA. She is currently pursuing studies in Transformative Language Arts for certification to lead healing through writing workshops for women and children afflicted by trauma and grief.
Hamburg was on faculty at Roosevelt University, Chicago. Her journalism work has been published in media outlets including Chicago Tribune, Chicago Southtown, Chicago Sun Times; and Huffington Post. She now lives in Southern California.
“I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.”
Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones