Photo by Evan Kodani

Mia Nakaji Monnier is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. The daughter of a Japanese mother and a white American father, Mia grew up moving frequently across the country and has lived in places including Texas, Illinois, Washington, Vermont, and Kyoto, Japan. 

Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, BuzzFeed News, KCET, Los Angeles Review of Books, Shondaland, and The Washington Post. She also writes the newsletter Following the Thread, about motherhood and art. She has worked as an editor at Guernica, Apartment Therapy, HelloGiggles, and Japanese American community newspaper The Rafu Shimpo, and she served as developmental editor for the book The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest by Satsuki Ina (Heyday 2024).

A Tin House Workshop alum, Mia has won the Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Contest and a Los Angeles Press Club National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award, and received support from Idyllwild Arts, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Catapult. She has a Master of Professional Writing (MPW) in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern California and a BA in Japanese Studies from Middlebury College.

She also teaches journaling/memoir workshops and knitting classes.