Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

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Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

FRSL
Born (1989-06-02) 2 June 1989 (age 34)[1]
Westminster, London, England
OccupationWriter
NationalityBritish
American
Education
Genre
Notable worksHarmless Like You, Starling Days
Signature
Website
rowanhisayo.com

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan FRSL (born 2 June 1989) is a British-American writer. Her novels include Harmless Like You, which received a Betty Trask Award and the 2017 Author's Club First Novel Award, and Starling Days. She is the editor of Go Home!, an anthology of stories by Asian American writers. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.[2]

Early life and education[edit]

Buchanan was born in central London[3] to a half-Chinese, half-Japanese American mother and a British father, and grew up between London and New York.[4] She earned her B.A. from Columbia University, where she was a Core Scholar.[5][6] She lived in Tokyo, Japan, while working as an intern for a management consulting firm, then earned her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[7][8]

Career[edit]

Novels[edit]

Buchanan's debut novel, Harmless Like You, was published in the U.K. by Sceptre in 2016 and in the U.S. by Norton in 2017. The novel follows the overlapping stories of Yuki Oyama, a Japanese-American girl in 1960's New York who fights to become an artist, and her estranged son Jay, who in 2016 must travel to Berlin to confront a mother who abandoned their family when he was two. There was a "fierce" six-way bidding war among publishers for the manuscript,[9] and Harmless Like You was praised by Lorrie Moore and Alexander Chee.[10][11]

The Guardian called Harmless Like You a "startling debut" in England.[12] The book won a Betty Trask Award and the Author's Club First Novel Award.[13][14] The novel was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize, but did not win.[15] In America, The New York Times Book Review placed the hardback and paperback releases of the novel in its "Editor's Choice" section.[16][17] National Public Radio selected Harmless Like You as a Great Read and noted that the novel was "highly anticipated".[18] Ilana Masad wrote in the Los Angeles Review of Books that "there is no doubt about how good an artist she is, for this book demonstrates that she is an excellent one".[19]

Buchanan's second novel, Starling Days, was published by Sceptre in 2019. It is about Mina and Oscar, newly-weds who have moved from New York to London in hopes that a change of scenery and new friends will help Mina recover from a major depressive episode. The novel was selected by The Paris Review as a "Staff Pick" for being "an exquisite rendering of love, sadness, and misunderstanding."[20] Starling Days was positively reviewed by Eithne Farry in the Sunday Express,[21] and The Spectator described it as "a convincing novel about depression which manages, miraculously, not to be in itself depressing."[22] In The Guardian, Molly McCloskey criticized the novel's writing, particularly its unconvincing use of a feminist viewpoint, while also noting that Starling Days contained "indications that Buchanan is a better writer than this work would suggest" and concluding that the book "offers consolation" to readers.[23] The book was shortlisted for the 2019 Costa Book Awards in the Novel category.[24]

In 2022, Sceptre acquired the rights to publish Buchanan's third novel, titled The Sleepwatcher, which tells a story about adolescence and family from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl who is able to move around undetected while her body remains in bed.[25]

Other work[edit]

Buchanan is the editor of Go Home!, an 2018 anthology from Feminist Press in collaboration with Asian American Writers' Workshop that collects stories from Asian-American writers who "complicate and expand the idea of home".[26] She has also published fiction in literary magazines such as Granta, Tinhouse, and TriQuarterly. Her non-fiction and essays have appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Guernica, The Paris Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications.[27]

Buchanan was a 2016 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop and a 2018 Kundiman Fellow.[28][29]

Personal life[edit]

Buchanan identifies as a Japanese-British-Chinese-American, and has said "I’ve always had my hyphens, so it's hard for me to imagine how I'd write if I was only one thing."[8] She lives and writes in the U.K.[30]

Works[edit]

  • Harmless Like You (UK: Sceptre, 2016; US: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017) ISBN 9781473638327 (UK) ISBN 9781324000747 (US)
  • (Editor) Go Home! (Feminist Press, 2018) ISBN 9781936932016
  • Starling Days (Sceptre, 2019) ISBN 9781473638372

References[edit]

  1. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo. "Weird things make my grownup life feel real". Instagram. Archived from the original on 26 December 2021.
  2. ^ Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian.
  3. ^ "Sheltering: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on Relationship Dynamics and Mental Health". LitHub. 13 April 2020. Retrieved 9 April 2024.
  4. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo (8 September 2016). "Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: 'Pain shape-shifts down the generations'". The Guardian (Interview). Interviewed by Ilana Masad. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  5. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo. "Rowan Hisayo Buchanan". Columbia University. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  6. ^ "Students and Faculty Embrace Classic Readings, Modern Technology | Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
  7. ^ Russell, Steve (8 October 2016). "My brother and I grew up eating macaroni and cheese... with chopsticks". Ipswich Star. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  8. ^ a b Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo. "Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: About the Author" (Interview). Foyles. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
  9. ^ "Buchanan novel to Sceptre after 'fierce' six-way auction". The Bookseller. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  10. ^ O'Nolan, Conor. "Fiction: Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan". Irish Independent. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  11. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo (19 April 2018). "DEAR READER: A Q&A with Rowan Hisayo Buchanan". Tin House (Interview). Interviewed by Tin House Staff. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  12. ^ Rhodes, Emily (7 July 2017). "Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan review – a startling debut". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  13. ^ "Previous winners of the Betty Trask Prize and Awards". Society of Authors. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  14. ^ "Best First Novel Award". Authors' Club. Retrieved 3 December 2018.
  15. ^ "Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan". The Desmond Elliott Prize. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  16. ^ "11 New Books We Recommend This Week". The New York Times. 16 March 2017. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  17. ^ Khatib, Joumana (21 September 2018). "New in Paperback: 'Sticky Fingers,' 'Lea'". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  18. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo (25 February 2017). "'Harmless Like You' Is A Story Of How Hurts Are Inherited". NPR (Interview). Interviewed by Scott Simon. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  19. ^ Masad, Ilana (28 February 2017). "The Color of Art: On Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Debut". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  20. ^ Quong, Spencer (24 May 2019). "Staff Picks: Satire, Suzi Wu, and Starling Days". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
  21. ^ Farry, Eithne (21 July 2019). "A Tangled Web". Books. Sunday Express. p. 55.
  22. ^ Peake-Tomkinson, Alex (6 July 2019). "A novel about depression that doesn't depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed". The Spectator. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
  23. ^ McCloskey, Molly (12 July 2019). "Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan review – a tale of struggle and survival". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  24. ^ Flood, Alison (26 November 2019). "Debut author of Queenie caps success with Costa prize shortlisting". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  25. ^ Fraser, Katie (7 April 2022). "Sceptre scoops 'moving portrait' of adolescence from Buchanan". The Bookseller. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  26. ^ "Go Home!". Publishers Weekly. 29 January 2018. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  27. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo (2 May 2013). "Writing". Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  28. ^ "15 Kundiman Fellows Featured At LitHub!". Kundiman Foundation. 11 October 2018. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
  29. ^ "Meet AAWW's 2015 Margins Fellows!". Asian American Writers' Workshop. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
  30. ^ Buchanan, Rowan Hisayo (19 April 2018). "DEAR READER: A Q&A with Rowan Hisayo Buchanan". Tin House (Interview). Interviewed by Tin House Staff. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
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