Literature / Theatre & dance
Kathe Koja
born 1960 · novelist, short-story writer, theatre director
Detroit-born author of the Bram Stoker Award–winning horror novel The Cipher who still lives in metro Detroit and directs the immersive theatre company nerve.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Detroit years
- 1960–present
- Field
- Literature, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Koja was born in Detroit and has spent her life in the metro area. She wrote from childhood but committed to it after a Clarion science-fiction workshop, and her first novel, The Cipher (1991), about a mysterious hole in a storage-room floor, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the Locus Award for best first novel and made her a cult figure of literary horror. She followed it with dark, intense novels about outsiders such as Bad Brains and Skin, then with acclaimed young-adult novels and the historical Under the Poppy trilogy. In Detroit she founded and directs nerve, an immersive theatre company that stages her work in unconventional spaces, and she often collaborates with her husband, the illustrator Rick Lieder.
Highlights
- The Cipher (1991): Bram Stoker Award and Locus Award for best first novel
- Under the Poppy historical trilogy
- Young-adult novels including Buddha Boy
- Founding director of the Detroit immersive theatre company nerve