Draft:Claire Kohda
Claire Kohda | |
|---|---|
| Born | Claire Lyokho Kohda Hazelton 1990 |
| Other names | Claire Kohda Hazelton |
| Years active | –present |
Claire Lyokho Kohda Hazelton (born 1990) is an English literary critic, author, and violinist. She is known for her debut novel Woman, Eating (2022).
Early life
[edit]Born to a Japanese mother and an English father, Kohda is from the Thanet District of Kent.[1][2] She attended Clarendon House Grammar School in Ramsgate.[3]
Career
[edit]Under the names Claire Hazelton or Claire Kohda Hazelton, she began her career writing literary reviews for The Guardian, and then the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator.[4] As a professional violinist, she has played with the likes of Jessie Ware, Pete Tong, Sigur Rós, Max Richter, and The National, as well as the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO). She contributed to the soundtracks of the films The Two Popes (2019), The Matrix Resurrections (2021), and Tár (2022).
In January 2021,[5] HarperVia (a HarperCollins imprint) acquired the rights to publish Kohda's debut novel Woman, Eating in spring 2022 to critical acclaim.[6][7] The novel is a character study on Lydia, "millennial vampire" art school graduate living on her own in London for the first time. Kohda had written the novel during the COVID-19 lockdown when her violin career was put on hold.[8] She wanted to "step away from… reverence for the vampire" and "remove the vampire from the horror genre", taking inspiration from Asian literature that features the supernatural in grounded settings, to dissect human nature "by observing Lydia trying to just simply live her life in our world".[9]
Kohda contributed a short story to the 2023 collection Furies: Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed.[10] She joined the judges' panel of the 2025 Women's Prize Discoveries programme.[11]
Bibliography
[edit]Novels
[edit]- Woman, Eating (2022)
Short stories
[edit]- "Tygress" in Furies: Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed (2023)
- "An End" (2024) in Electric Literature[12]
References
[edit]- ^ Silvers, Isabella (13 June 2022). "Claire Kohda: "I wouldn't change being mixed-race for anything"". Mixed Messages. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
- ^ Varno, David (7 January 2022). "Writers to Watch Spring 2022". Publishers' Weekly. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
- ^ "A-level results - who in Thanet has made the grade?". Kent Online. 14 August 2008. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
- ^ "Articles by Claire Hazelton". MuckRack. Retrieved 12 October 2024.
- ^ Deahl, Rachel (8 January 2021). "Harper Tucks in to Kohda's 'Woman, Eating'". Publishers' Weekly. Retrieved 7 October 2024.
- ^ Popescu, Lucy (14 March 2022). "Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda review – millennial vampire tale with bite". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
- ^ Feeney, Madeleine (26 March 2022). "Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda review — a millennial vampire in London". The Times. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
- ^ Toohey, Caitlin (27 April 2022). "Vampires with a twist and genre constructs with Claire Kohda". Better Words Podcast. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
- ^ Ramakrishnan, JR (20 April 2022). "A Vampire Hungry for Blood and Intimacy". Electric Literature. Retrieved 12 October 2024.
- ^ Mamata, Bidisha (12 March 2023). "Furies: Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed review – a slick and starry collection of short stories". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
- ^ "Launching Discoveries 2025". Women's Prize. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
- ^ Marcus, Halimah (27 March 2024). "On the Origin of an Ending". Electric Literature. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
Category:British Asian writers
Category:English fantasy writers
Category:English horror writers
Category:English people of Japanese descent
Category:People from Thanet (district)
Category:Writers from Kent