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Katie Kitamura (born 1979) is an American novelist, journalist, and art critic. As of April 2025, she was teaching creative writing at New York University.
Kitamura graduated from Princeton University in New Jersey in 1999. She earned a PhD in American literature from the London Consortium. Her thesis was titled The Aesthetics of Vulgarity and the Modern American Novel (2005).
Earlier in her life, Kitamura trained as a ballerina.
Kitamura was introduced to mixed martial arts in Japan by her brother. Her first novel, The Longshot, published in 2009, is about the preparation undertaken by a fighter and his trainer ahead of a championship bout against a famous opponent. The cover art of the US edition of her book features the title tattooed on knuckles; the knuckles are her brother's. Kitamura's second novel, Gone to the Forest, published in 2013, is set in an unnamed colonial country and describes the life and suffering of a landowning family against a backdrop of civil strife and political change.
Kitamura's 2017 novel A Separation will be adapted for a film starring Katherine Waterston. Her novel Intimacies appeared in 2021.
Kitamura writes for The Guardian, The New York Times, and Wired. She has written articles on mixed martial arts, film criticism and analysis, and art.
Awards and recognition
In 2010, Kitamura's The Longshot was shortlisted for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. In 2013, her Gone to the Forest was also shortlisted for the Young Lions Fiction Award. In 2021, Kitamura's Intimacies was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction. In 2025 Kitamura was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her novel Audition was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.
Selected bibliography
Autobiography
Novels
Journalism
Personal life
Kitamura is married to author Hari Kunzru.
Categories: 1979 Births, 21st-century American Novelists, 21st-century American Women Novelists, American Novelists Of Asian Descent, American Women Journalists Of Asian Descent, American Women Novelists Of Asian Descent, American Writers Of Japanese Descent, Living People, Princeton University Alumni, Writers From Sacramento, California
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