About Aimee

Aimee Miller Zaring is the author of the forthcoming memoir Cutting Loose: My Journey from Survival Mode to Embodied Flow. Her debut book, Flavors from Home: Refugees in Kentucky Share Their Stories and Comfort Foods, earned the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Charity-Fundraising Cookbook in North America. She is the recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council and two artist enrichment grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

A fourth-generation Kentuckian, born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Zaring learned how to read and tell stories at an early age. In fact, some of the first stories she learned to read were her very own, thanks to an innovative “write to read” technique her mother studied while pursuing a master’s in education. Zaring would tell original stories to her mother, who then transcribed the words and helped her youngest daughter read them aloud. This creative exercise ignited in Zaring a lifelong love of language and stories.

Zaring earned a B.A. in English and Psychology from Bellarmine University and an MFA in Writing from Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Adirondack Review, The Courier-Journal, and elsewhere.

Never one to stay in her own lane, Aimee has been a zoo docent, travel agent, American Red Cross outreach director, English language instructor, and small business owner. She has volunteered in a women’s prison and harvested grapes in a vineyard. Her superpowers include her infectious enthusiasm and finding joy in the small things. She loves to learn about different cultures, geek out on neuroscience, and research holistic health and wellness topics.

In the writing of Cutting Loose, Zaring became a certified Somatic Stress Release™ practitioner to better educate herself and her readers about how to navigate stress responses, build emotional resilience, and live a more embodied life. Her goal as an “Aim”fluencer is to point people back to their own internal compass and to help cultivate more light, love, and healing in the world.

Zaring lives in Northern Kentucky with her life partner, two bonus children, and Lizzie, a Pocket Beagle mix, rescued from a gas station in Mississippi.