Clara Kumagai

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee, Room, The Kyoto Journal and Cicada, among others. Her short story, ‘A Girl Named Indigo’, was translated and published in Japanese as a picture book with the title Indigo wo sagashite (Shogakukan, 2020). She was a recipient of a We Need Diverse Books Mentorship (with Nicola Yoon) and a finalist for the 2020 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.

Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling (Zephyr, 2023), blends magical realism with Japanese myth in an original story about grief and memory. US rights have been sold to Abrams Children’s and Canadian rights to Penguin Teen Canada.

Clara is also developing an essay collection centred around multiracial identity, hybridity and belonging. She lives in Ireland.