I like to go to art museums. I like to sing. I participate in a couple of community choirs. I love to read. I've worked at a lot of different jobs, some of which have found their way into my fiction (phone company employee, mill worker, pigeon wrangler, mother) and some that might find their way into future fiction (hotel maid, domestic servant, au pair, construction worker, pickle factory worker, grocery store clerk, freelance journalist).
My author's bio might read like this:
Claire Oshetsky is the author of the novels EVIL GENIUS (February 2026) POOR DEER (January 2024) and CHOUETTE (November 2021), all from Ecco. Claire lives in Santa Cruz, California.
If you need a longer bio, here you go:
Claire's novel POOR DEER won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 2025. It was also named a "Best Book of 2024" by the New Yorker, and the audiobook adaptation, read by Sophie Amoss, was a finalist for the 2025 Audie Award Audiobook of the Year.
Claire's novel CHOUETTE won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and was longlisted for the Pen/Faulkner award for fiction. Chouette was a finalist for the Barbellion Prize, dedicated to the furtherance of disabled voices in literature, and made the honor list for the 2022 Otherwise Prize, awarded to works of science fiction or fantasy that explore gender roles.
Claire's short fiction has been featured in Fiction International, Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran, Alaska Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, and others.
