Claire Adam

Claire Adam was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the youngest of four children. She left at eighteen to study Physics at Brown University, then spent years split between Bologna and Cork before settling in London. She earned an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she now tutors and mentors emerging writers through the Faber Academy.

Her novels deal with family bonds under pressure, the things left unsaid, and the long aftermath of a single decision. Golden Child, published in 2019, follows a Trinidadian family through scarcity, loyalty, and love. Love Forms (2025) returns to the same island and the same kind of quiet devastation: Dawn, sixteen and pregnant at Carnival in 1980, is sent to a convent in Venezuela, gives birth, and is told to forget. Forty years on, in south London, divorced and carrying a quiet distance from her parents, she is still searching for the daughter she never met.

Golden Child won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. It was named among the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. Love Forms was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and selected as a best book of 2025 by The Times, NPR, and The Critic.

A new reader should begin with Love Forms. Its first-person narration by Dawn gives you the full emotional range of Adam's work in one sustained voice, and the plot moves with a quiet urgency that keeps pulling you forward. Golden Child is a fine second read if you want a wider family canvas.