Katherine J. Chen Receives Award from the Paris Writers Atelier

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Katherine Chen and Mary Duncan celebrating her award at Cipriani’s in NYC.

Katherine J. Chen received an award from the Paris Writers Atelier for a Work in Progress. Her new book Birthright (working title) which is under contract with Random House, explores through a revolutionary lens the brutal and strange world of Arthurian literature. Legendary characters are rendered startlingly human, as we follow the lives of Morgan le Fay and her half-brother, King Arthur. While set in a time and world extremely distant from our own, this work will engage timely themes, such as nation-building and genocide, the ties that bind us, and the limits—should they exist—of love. The novel’s writing derives inspiration from works, including Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel.   

Katherine is the author of Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc (Random House US / Hodder & Stoughton UK), which won the 2023 American Library in Paris Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and Mary B (Random House US). 

She also received the Director’s Grant from the De Groot Foundation. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and other publications, with forthcoming work in the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. 

She is a graduate of Princeton University and Boston University’s MFA program and is pursuing her doctoral degree in English at Brown University.

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Mary Duncan

About Mary Duncan

Mary Duncan, a native San Diegan, grew up in National City, where Henry Miller said he found his identity. In searching for her identity, she has traveled to numerous countries and prefers to be where there is action, diversity and controversy. Her research specialty as a professor at San Diego State University was the “troubles” in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army. She focused on the conflict’s impact on children and the internal organization of the I.R.A. and its cell groups. In addition she has researched children and play patterns in Mexican squatter villages, Arab Tourism in London and international terrorism. In 1982, she moved to La Jolla, a seaside community in San Diego. She met people who introduced her to the worlds of Henry Miller, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette and other writers. And it is in these worlds that she found relief from the stress and uncertainty that emanated from her Belfast research. Paris and La Jolla entered her life almost simultaneously. In Paris she created a circle of friends and started building a foundation for a life in the City of Light. After her marriage to Yuri Loskutov, a Russian, she lived in Moscow several months of the year and founded Shakespeare and Company Bookstore Moscow. Since 2000, she has mainly lived in Paris. In 2005, she purchased an archive consisting of audio tapes, photographs and correspondence related to the life of Henry Miller. Some of these materials are described in her memoir, “Henry Miller is Under My Bed: People and Place on the Way to Paris.” (2008). She is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Henry Miller Memorial Library in BIg Sur, California and is is a patron of the Shakespeare and Company Literary Festival. In 2008, she founded the Paris Writers Group. In between her writing and travels, she continues to live in Paris.