Claire Stanford
Assistant Professor | English Loyola Marymount University
Media
Biography
Her fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, Third Coast, Redivider, and Tin House Flash Fridays, among other publications; her nonfiction has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Lit, The Millions, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The American Scholar. Her work has received fellowships and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences.
She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in English from UCLA. Her scholarly interests include posthumanism, Asian and Asian American futurism, and contemporary U.S. science fiction; her scholarship has been published in Modern Fiction Studies and The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms.
Education
University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D.
English
2022
University of California, Los Angeles
M.A.
English
2018
University of Minnesota
M.F.A.
Creative Writing (Fiction)
2012
Yale University
B.A.
English
2006
Social
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
Winner, Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, University of Rochester
2023
Winner, Women Writing the West WILLA Literary Award, Multiform Fiction.
2023
College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Award, Creative Activity, University of Nevada
2023
University of California Office of the President Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA
2020
Mellon-EPIC Fellowship in Teaching Excellence, Community Learning, UCLA
2020
Links
Languages
- English
- Spanish
Media Appearances
Claire Stanford, author of "Happy for You"
WXXI News online
2023-12-01
Can happiness be measured? Should it be measured? If yes, how can it be done?
In her novel, “Happy for You,” Claire Stanford tells the story of a young woman hired by a big tech company focused on revolutionizing happiness.
Big Tech Wants to Commodify Your Happiness
The New York Times online
2022-04-19
“If a simple algorithm could tell you how happy you were — objectively how happy — wouldn’t you want to know?” a character asks early in “Happy for You,” Claire Stanford’s engrossing and clever first novel. Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto, the book’s deeply ambivalent narrator, isn’t so sure. Her voice carries us through questions about happiness, technology’s role in our lives, the importance of the body and how one might find a sense of contentment and belonging in the world.
Episode 405: Change vs. Stasis: Character Development in Literary Fiction – Interview with Claire Stanford
DIY MFA online
2022-04-13
Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Claire Stanford. We’ll be talking about her debut novel Happy for You, a contemporary adult fiction novel grappling with tech, happiness, and what living authentically really means.
