Draft:Jade Song
Artist and author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jade Song is an American novelist, artist, filmmaker, and art director. Her first novel, Chlorine, was published in 2023 and received attention for its blend of body horror, magical realism, and coming-of-age narrative. The work won the Alex Award and the Writer's Center McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize. It has been translated into several languages and was praised for its exploration of the female body, otherness, and the social pressures faced by queer and immigrant youth in the United States.
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Life
Jade Song grew up in the United States, where she competed in swimming at a high level during her adolescence, an experience that informed the writing of her first novel.[1] She later moved into visual arts and worked as an art director in New York City before devoting more time to writing.[1][2]
Song began writing in 2020 and quickly published her first short stories.[1] She describes herself as an artist in the broader sense, considering writing to be a component of her creative work.[2] In 2024, she participated in The Black List Writers Lab for her adapted screenplay of Chlorine.[3]
Work
Chlorine, published in the United States by William Morrow and Company in 2023, was Song's first novel.[4] It was translated into French by Marie Koullen in 2025 for publication by Argyll (éditions), as well as into Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, and Italian.[5] The plot follows a competitive Chinese-American teenage swimmer who becomes obsessed with mermaids and aspires to transform herself into an aquatic creature. Faced with familial pressure, abuse by her coach, and the demands of high-level sport, she gradually rejects her humanity in favor of a violent and irreversible transformation.[6][7][8] The novel has been described as a hybrid work that employs the tropes of queer coming-of-age and body horror to explore themes of athletic performance, personal identity, immigration, and female sexuality.[4][5]
Chlorine received critical acclaim; Publishers Weekly emphasized its unsettling approach and the way it subverts conventional coming-of-age storytelling by incorporating body horror. Booklist highlighted the balance between horror and emotional resonance, noting that the physical violence functions as a metaphor for the constraints imposed on young women.[8] Several critics noted the novel’s queer and diasporic dimensions, with the mermaid serving as a metaphor for liberation from social norms.[5] The book was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times, and received both the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Writer's Center McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize in 2024.[4][9][10]
Song announced a second novel, I Love You Don’t Die, scheduled for publication in 2026, and a short story collection, Ox Ghost Snake Demon, scheduled for publication in 2027, both with William Morrow and Company.[4][5]
Writing style
Song’s writing in Chlorine is often described as sensory, visceral, and corporeal, characterized by abundant imagery related to water, blood, and transformation.[5] Chlorine has been compared to the cinematic body horror works of David Cronenberg and Julia Ducournau.[1][7] According to Song, the physical violence depicted in the novel is rooted in real experience: menstruation, trauma, self-harm, and abuse are treated as concrete experiences of the female body rather than purely fantastical elements.[2] The novel also emphasizes a queer and diasporic reading of the adolescent heroine; Song has explained that she did not wish to present her characters as “others,” but rather to normalize them by including their contradictions and complexity.[2]
Bibliography
- Chlorine, William Morrow, 2023 (ISBN 978-0-06-325760-3)
- I Love You Don't Die, William Morrow, 2026 (ISBN 978-0-06-343388-5)
Awards and distinctions
- 2024: Alex Award for Chlorine[9][10]
- 2024: Writer's Center McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize for Chlorine [4]
- 2025: Vermont Studio Center Fellowship[11]