A. J. Bermudez is an American author and screenwriter. Her short fiction and screenwriting have won a number of awards, including the PAGE International Screenwriting Award (iCON, 2021),^[1][2] the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize ("The Lady Will Pay for Everything", 2021),^[3] and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, University of Iowa Press, 2022).^[4] Her films have been produced in the U.S. and internationally,^[5] and her literary writing has appeared in McSweeney's,^[2] Virginia Quarterly Review,^[6] Story,^[7] Chicago Review,^[8] The Masters Review,^[9] Fiction International,^[10] Electric Literature,^[11] Boulevard,^[12] Creative Nonfiction,^[13] and elsewhere.

Bermudez grew up in various parts of the United States, and after graduating high school at age 16, she moved to Russia, where she worked as a music translator and with the Afghan refugee population in Moscow.^[14][15] Prior to screenwriting, Bermudez worked as an EMT.^[14][16]

In interviews, Bermudez has talked about the loss of her parents at a young age, and has described "writing, like mourning, [as] a constant negotiation between the political and the personal."^[17][18]

Bermudez has been a vocal advocate of social justice and the arts.^[19] In 2019, she was named one of the Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch by the International Screenwriters Association.^[20] Her debut book was called a "must-read" by Publishers Weekly^[21] and was described by Anthony Marra as "an absolutely brilliant collection, so of the moment formally and politically yet timeless in its pursuit of human contradiction."^[22]

Bermudez was announced as Co-Editor of The Maine Review in January 2022, and currently serves as Editor.^[23][24] As a writer, Bermudez's work has been noted to focus on "intersections of power, privilege, and place," with characters who subvert traditional ideas of literary protagonists.^[25][26]

In 2022, Bermudez was one of the inaugural residents artists of the Nawat Fes Residency in Fez, Morocco.^[27][28][29]

Bermudez co-wrote the film My Dead Friend Zoe, which premiered at South by Southwest in 2024, with director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes.

• Stories No One Hopes Are About Them (University of Iowa Press)^[22][4]
• "The Real India" (Virginia Quarterly Review)^[42]
• "Bottle Girl" (Electric Literature)^[43]
• "All the Places You Will Never Be Again" (Chicago Quarterly Review)^[44]
• "Misery & Company" (Creative Nonfiction)^[18][45]
• "Rabbitfish" (SmokeLong Quarterly)^[46][25]
• "Ori Dreams of a Tree" (City in a Wild Garden: Stories of the Nature of Cities)^[47]
• "The Third Trip" (Coastal Shelf)^[48]
• "Octopus" (Story)^[49]
• "Conservancy" (Litro)^[50]
• "The Voice as Heirloom" (Fiction International)^[10]
• "Obscure Trivia of the Antarctic" (Boulevard)^[12][51]
• "Mnemophobe" (Chicago Review)^[52]
• "Rosa" (Every Day Fiction)^[53]
• "Fall" (The Baltimore Review)^[54][55]
• "Ní de Aqui, Ní de Alla" (Arachne Press)^[56]
• "Casualty" (Columbia Journal)^[57]
• "Water & Earth" (Bad Bride)^[58]
• "Orphea" (Fearsome Critters)^[59]
• "Insertion" (The Offing)^[60]
• "Maslow's Hierarchy of Post-Pandemic Wish Fulfillment Fantasies" (McSweeney's)^[2]
• "The Body Electric" (Gertrude Press)^[61]
• "Walk-Off" (Hobart)^[62]
• "On the Negligible Proximity of Money and Mouths" (Heirlock)^[63]
• "Year of the Snake" (The Masters Review)^[9]
• "Totenhaus" (Black Static)^[64][65]
• "Eating the Leaves" (Lunch Ticket)^[66][67]
• "Sabbatical" (Cheap Pop)^[68]
• "Cain vs. Cain" (Iron Horse Literary Review)^[69]
• "Disenchantment" (Spider Road Press)^[70]
• "The Breakneck Boys" (Concīs)^[71]