Kat Tang

Kat Tang's debut novel, Five-Star Stranger, received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist and was featured on NPR, Oprah, and People Magazine. The novel, about a rentable man who takes on various guises for his clients in order to run away from his own past, asks: Can someone who is unhappy make others happy? And what happens when we commodify companionship? Her comics and short stories have also appeared in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, and The Margins, among others. Her second novel, June and Yumi’s Disaster Utopia, is forthcoming with Harper Via in 2027.

A former lawyer turned fiction writer, Kat received her JD at U.C. Berkeley and her MFA from Columbia University. Born in Hangzhou, China; relocated to Sendai, Japan; and then raised in various locales in California's Bay Area, she is interested in transnational identity, cultural expression, and how individuals make and fake connections in an ever-shifting world.