About

Broken things can be reimagined and made whole.

Kemba’s forthcoming memoir, The House with a Hundred Doors, begins in the quiet terror of a midwestern sundown town and moves through rupture toward the fragile, deliberate work of rebuilding a life. It is a story shaped by her experiences of abuse and homelessness, but also by a persistent belief that broken things—houses, histories, people—can be reclaimed, reimagined, and made whole.

Before she understood this on the page, she learned it through buildings. Trained as both an architect and a student of literature, Kemba found herself, after the Great Recession, walking through Detroit’s historic neighborhoods, documenting places others had overlooked or written off. In abandoned structures and threatened landmarks, she recognized something familiar: stories at risk of being erased, and the quiet urgency of saving them. That work became a lifelong commitment to historic preservation, not just as a profession but as a way of seeing.

Kemba’s writing has taken many forms over the years, from an early memoir about her time as a youth volunteer in Southern Africa, to a staged play about survival and voice in the aftermath of an abusive marriage. Across genres, her work returns to the same questions: What do we carry forward? What do we leave behind? And how do we begin again?

Kemba currently works as an architect with Quinn Evans, where her projects focus on adaptive reuse, cultural memory, and community-centered design. Her preservation work has supported the restoration of historic buildings around the country, and her commitment to community service has led her to receive the 2023 President’s Award from AIA Michigan for her contributions to the profession and to community-focused design.

Kemba lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with her husband and children, where she continues to write stories, restore buildings, and pay close attention to the narratives held in the spaces around her.