Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu (born 1959) is an American writer of adult fiction. Her best-known work is The Taker, a literary novel with historical and fantasy elements that was published in 2011 and recognized as one of the ten best debut novels of the year by the American Library Association. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain and Italy.

She has also had a 29-year career in the US federal government working in a number of positions dealing with intelligence and foreign policy, with an emphasis on technology issues. Since 2012 she has worked as a senior policy analyst for the RAND Corporation.

Biography

Katsu was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, the daughter of an American-born father and a Japanese-born mother. She spent the majority of her youth living near Concord, Massachusetts, to which she attributes her interest in the early American history featured in her novels. She attended Brandeis University (BA in literature and writing, 1981) where she studied with novelist John Irving and children's book author Margaret Rey, and the Johns Hopkins University (MA in Fiction, 2004). She is also an alumna of the Squaw Valley writers workshops.

Career 

Katsu's novels are generally cited for the quality of the prose and the ability to portray a supernatural setting in an immediate and realistic way (“makes the supernatural seem possible” – Publishers Weekly and "renews a genre... tragedy without..the hyperbole of high romance"—Locus Magazine). The  first novel in the trilogy, The Taker, is set primarily in the past but has a present-day narrative as a frame,

Viewed as another literary take on the Faustian bargain and a model of setting stories-within-stories, The Taker Trilogy tells the story of a young woman who has been given eternal life but comes to see this condition as a punishment for evil acts she perpetrated in life and is now condemned to revisit until the end of time.

Personal life 

She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband musician Bruce Katsu.

Bibliography

Novels 

 The Taker, Gallery Books, 2011 () 
 The Reckoning, Gallery Books, 2012 ()
 The Descent, Gallery Books, 2014 ()
 The Hunger, Transworld, March 2018 ()

Short stories 

 The Witch Sisters, 2013 (ASIN B008N1YHPM)
 The Marriage Price, 2012 (ASIN B00B0QITYC)
 The Devil's Scribe, Gallery Books, 2012 (ASIN B006VFZPNU)
 Pipefitter's Union, in anthology Enhanced Gravity, Paycock Press ()

Awards 

The Taker was named one of the ten best debut novels of 2011 by Booklist magazine, the publication of the American Library Association. The second novel, The Reckoning, was nominated for several year-end awards including Goodreads Readers Choice Award for best paranormal fantasy and RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award for best paranormal romance.

References

External links 

Alma Katsu official website: http://www.almakatsubooks.com
Alma Katsu official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alma-Katsu-author/152469558105584
Publisher's website: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Alma-Katsu/73879637
Italian publisher's website: https://web.archive.org/web/20130518005614/http://www.longanesi.it/scheda-autore.asp?editore=Longanesi&idautore=4273
Brazilian publisher's website: http://www.editoranovoconceito.com.br/autores/alma-katsu

Category:Living people
Category:1959 births
Category:American women novelists
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:Novelists from Alaska
Category:Writers from Fairbanks, Alaska
Category:American writers of Japanese descent
Category:American women of Japanese descent
Category:Brandeis University alumni
Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni