Buchanan was born in central London[3] to a half-Chinese, half-Japanese American mother and a British father, and grew up between London and New York.[4] She earned her B.A. fromColumbia University, where she was a Core Scholar.[5][6] She lived inTokyo, Japan, while working as an intern for a management consulting firm, then earned her M.F.A. from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison.[7][8]
Buchanan's debut novel,Harmless Like You, was published in the U.K. bySceptre in 2016 and in the U.S. byW. W. Norton in 2017. The novel follows the overlapping stories of Yuki Oyama, a Japanese-American girl in 1960's New York who fights to become an artist, and her estranged son Jay, who in 2016 must travel to Berlin to confront a mother who abandoned their family when he was two. There was a "fierce" six-way bidding war among publishers for the manuscript,[9] andHarmless Like You was praised byLorrie Moore andAlexander Chee.[10][11]
Buchanan's second novel,Starling Days, was published by Sceptre in 2019. It is about Mina and Oscar, newly-weds who have moved from New York to London in hopes that a change of scenery and new friends will help Mina recover from a major depressive episode. The novel was selected byThe Paris Review as a "Staff Pick" for being "an exquisite rendering of love, sadness, and misunderstanding."[20]Starling Days was positively reviewed byEithne Farry in theSunday Express,[21] andThe Spectator described it as "a convincing novel about depression which manages, miraculously, not to be in itself depressing."[22] InThe Guardian,Molly McCloskey criticized the novel's writing, particularly its unconvincing use of a feminist viewpoint, while also noting thatStarling Days contained "indications that Buchanan is a better writer than this work would suggest" and concluding that the book "offers consolation" to readers.[23] The book was shortlisted for the 2019Costa Book Award for Novel.[24]
In 2022, Sceptre acquired the rights to publish Buchanan's third novel, titledThe Sleepwatcher, which tells a story about adolescence and family from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl who is able to move around undetected while her body remains in bed.[25]
Buchanan identifies as a Japanese-British-Chinese-American, and has said "I’ve always had my hyphens, so it's hard for me to imagine how I'd write if I was only one thing."[8] She lives and writes in the U.K.[30] Buchanan has a daughter with her partner.[31]
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