Laura Kalpakian is the internationally published author of twenty works of fiction, some under names other than her own. She has also published four collections of short fiction. In 2021 first nonfiction books appeared. Memory Into Memoir: a Handbook for Writers (University of New Mexico Press) guides writers toward wrestling the unruly past to the page. The Unruly Past, published by Paint Creek Press tackles Kalpakian's own unruly past and the divergent cultures within her family. Paint Creek Press has also reissued her seminal novel, These Latter Days and the award-winning Dark Continent and Other Stories. Kalpakian's novel American Cookery was nominated for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and she has been awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship and twice the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award, as well as a Pen West Award, a Pushcart Prize and the Anahid Award for an American writer of Armenian descent. Educated on both the east and west coasts, she has a bachelor's and master's degree in history.

A native Californian, she lives in the Pacific Northwest.