Author photo by Eric Patton, 2024.
About Foster
Claire Rudy Foster is a queer, nonbinary trans writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. With published and celebrated work as an author, essayist, co-writer, ghostwriter, editor, book reviewer, script writer, and journalist, Foster's protean style is both fluid and provocative. Foster is known for “brilliant, insightful fiction about identity, relationships, and human rights.”
Recent Work
Foster is the co-writer of three books with recovery advocate Ryan Hampton, including the bestselling nonfiction book Unsettled (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) . Unsettled is a shocking inside account of reckless capitalism and injustice in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case. Read the glowing review by Patrick Radden Keefe in The New Yorker.
Foster’s most recent book with Ryan Hampton is Fentanyl Nation: Toxic Politics and America’s Failed War on Drugs, forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in 2024.
Foster’s debut novel The Rain Artist (Moonstruck Books, 2024) imagines a future without rain and exposes the links between billionaire depravity and climate destruction. With comparisons to Margaret Atwood, Ursula LeGuin, and Philip K. Dick, this book was called an “instant classic” and essential reading for lovers of speculative fiction.
Foster also wrote short story collection Shine of the Ever (Interlude Press, 2019), which O: The Oprah Magazine named as one of the best LGBTQ books of the year. Foster’s first collection was I’ve Never Done This Before.
One Writer, Many Voices
Foster’s wildly popular work can be found in the Library of Congress and has been read on the floor of the Senate. They speak at colleges and universities, hospitals, treatment centers, and schools about recovery and transgender issues. To request a reading or book an event, please use the contact form.
Foster writes fiction, nonfiction, personal essays, articles, reported news stories, interviews, book reviews, cultural commentary, full-length books, screenplays, TV and film treatments, speeches, editorials, blog content, and letters. They also work as a ghostwriter.
Writing
Foster has performed with literary stars such as Cheryl Strayed, Lidia Yuknavitch, Leni Zumas, Melissa Febos, Chen Chen, T Kira Madden, and many others. Their writing has gone viral and appears on NPR, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, and many other journals. To request a reading or book an event, please use the contact form.
Foster’s fiction was long-listed for the ALA Over The Rainbow Award. Foster has also received nominations for the prestigious Pushcart Prize four times, as well as several small press awards for excellence, including Lambda Literary Award, Foreword INDIES Award, Speculative Literature Foundation’s Working Class Writer Grant, NLA-International Nonfiction Writing Award, and SFWA Writing Award.
Education
Foster is a graduate of Reed College and also holds an MFA in Creative Writing. They have studied with Jack Driscoll, Pam Houston, Benjamin Percy, Claire Davis, and Kellie Wells. Foster has taught writing workshops with Cleaver Magazine, Reed College Paideia, and others.