Author Spotlight: Katherine Clavaton

It takes a great deal of courage to undo your first story. Author Katherine Clavaton’s first story, written before sixth grade, was a dark confessional in which she killed off her childhood friends, one by one, without even changing their names. It was shocking, and eventually, it had to go.

“Looking back, what was I thinking?” she says now. She remembers exactly what she was thinking, but she would rather not say.

That early spark of ambition, darkness, and raw honesty has never left her. It has only refined itself into the voice behind her current work—contemporary fiction, romance, and psychological dark literary fiction that leans unflinchingly into emotional intensity.

From Wattpad to Poetry

Clavaton’s origin story begins like many young writers of her generation: a self-described “Wattpad addict.” She devoured stories on the platform until a pivotal thought struck her. Wait, I could do this too! So she did. Her first published story, Room 666, was exactly what a competitive, curious preteen with a taste for the macabre might write. It was dark and personal. And when readers actually started reading her words, she felt, for the first time, like a real writer.

By high school, her medium had evolved from prose to poetry, inspired largely by a girl she liked in eighth grade. “She was my muse for a long time,” Clavaton says. That period taught her a valuable lesson: that longing, obsession, and emotions could be shaped into art. Her current literary tastes—which include The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (“I will defend this book with my life”) and My Dark Vanessa—reflect that same fascination with complexity and emotional pain.

The Scorpio Energy of Her Work

When asked to describe her genre leanings, Clavaton makes it clear she prefers contemporary fiction, romance, and psychological or dark literary fiction. “I like stories that feel intense emotionally and psychologically,” she says. People often tell her she has strong “Scorpio energy,” which she translates as “passionate, a little intense, maybe a bit dark.”

That intensity shows up in her creative process. Inspiration strikes anywhere, from personal experiences, friends’ stories, random thoughts, or even a single word that sounds nice. One of her most unexpected successes came from just two fragments: “Black and White” and “I Don’t Know Why.” This grew into a story titled They Were Wearing Black and White, and I Don’t Know Why. She submitted it to a teacher at her Christian school, fully expecting to be asked to rewrite something so dark. Instead, she got the highest score!

Clavaton is refreshingly honest about her work habits. She is not disciplined in the traditional sense. She does not write every day at the same time, nor does she force inspiration. Instead, she thrives under pressure. “Deadlines force me to actually finish things,” she admits. “If there’s no deadline, I kind of just wait until I feel like writing again.”

What she does have is ritual—and an unusual one at that. Before writing, she gets fully dressed up, “Full glam, red lipstick, and all.” It’s not about vanity, she insists. “It just makes me feel more confident, like I can take my writing more seriously.”

Her ideal writing day balances two opposing forces, which is rest and pressure. She wants to wake up naturally after a long sleep, with no alarm, but still have a deadline looming. “I need both,” she says.

How She Creates the Story

Clavaton’s characters are deeply personal. Her main characters are usually based on parts of herself or the person she wishes she could be. Side characters often come from the people around her. “Even though I like being alone,” she notes, “I still need to interact with people to have something real to write about.”

And a lot of her real life ends up in her fiction. Growing up in a broken home and moving between different places gave her a particular perspective that naturally surfaces in her stories. “I like taking real experiences and shaping them into something more, sometimes exaggerating them to make them hit harder,” she says.

This is not confessional writing so much as alchemical writing—turning lived pain into crafted tension.

After completing a draft, Clavaton doesn’t celebrate in a big way. She likes to enjoy a good matcha latte, a long stretch, and then reading the work aloud while recording it on her phone. “Hearing it makes it feel more real,” she explains. “Like, okay, this exists now. I have to finish it.”

She waits only a few hours before editing. “I like coming back to it while it’s still fresh, but not too fresh,” she says.

That balance between closeness and distance, pressure and rest, darkness and glamour seems to define her creative life. She doesn’t like to force her stories. She takes her time and lets them sit in her Notes app for weeks or months until they suddenly become whole.

“I don’t always know that I do have a process,” she says of her own method. “Sometimes it just happens.”

Where to Find Her

For readers drawn to emotionally intense, psychologically complex fiction with a dark edge, Clavaton is an author to watch. You can follow her on social media at @katherinecea_ and explore her published work on her website.

In a literary landscape often dominated by talk of brand, platform, and marketability, Katherine Clavaton offers something rarer: a voice that is unafraid of its own darkness, dressed in red lipstick, and ready to surprise you.

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