Chloe Aridjis

Chloe Aridjis

Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican writer based in London. She is the author of three novels, Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France, Asunder, set in London's National Gallery, and Sea Monsters, which was awarded the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her work often deals with themes of urban alienation and fragile ecosystems. Alongside her fiction Chloe has written for different art journals, among them frieze and Tate, Etc, and was guest curator of the Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 and the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writers Award for 2020 for a future novel set in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Chloe came to England many years ago to do an MPhil and DPhil at Oxford under the supervision of Malcolm Bowie; her dissertation was on 19th century French poetry and magic shows involving magic lanterns and automata. Her next novel, The Shadow of the Object, is loosely inspired by those years. She is also preparing a collection of essays and short stories, Dialogue with a Somnambulist, to be released in October with House Sparrow Press.

Chloe is a member of XR Writers Rebel, a group of writers who focus on addressing the climate emergency. She is primarily interested in animal rights/welfare and the biodiversity crisis. Last autumn Chloe devised and co-hosted On the Brink, an international online event involving nearly forty writers and wildlife activists, each speaking about a species hovering on the brink of extinction. The next event, a rallying cry for our rapidly vanishing insect kingdom, will be held on May 24th.

Many years ago, she founded the Ecology Club at her high school in Mexico City.

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