about

A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and director based in New York and Los Angeles.

Her first book, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a Lambda Award Finalist. Her most recent screenwriting project, My Dead Friend Zoe (co-written with director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman), won at SXSW and premiered in theaters in 2025.

Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Electric Literature, Chicago Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, Boulevard, Story, The Common, and elsewhere.

She is a recipient of the Page Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship.

Her work has been featured at such venues as the Yale Center for British Art, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival, and has received support from the Banff Centre, the Cultural Association of Morocco, the Bethany Arts Community, the Cambridge Writers Workshop, the Watermill Center, and the Montalvo Arts Center.

In addition to writing and filmmaking, Bermudez is also a former boxer and EMT, and her work gravitates toward contemporary explorations of power, privilege, and place.