Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1968. She studied art at the University of California and creative writing at Columbia. Since 2001, she has lived and worked in New York City. She is renowned for her insightful writings on contemporary art issues. She collaborates with reputable publications such as Grand Street, BOMB, and Art Forum. Her first novel, "Telex from Cuba" (2008), impressed with its multi-layered composition and depth. It was shortlisted for the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and it won the California Book Award and the New York Times Notable Book Award. Five years later, in 2013, her novel "The Flamethrowers" established her as a major novelist who masterfully controls her material and cleverly prompts readers to contemplate the significance of the ephemeral, the concept of speed, the struggle between tenderness and violence, and the incendiary interventions of chance. Kushner is the only author to be nominated for the National Book Award for both her first and second novels. Her fiction and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Paris Review, and Art Forum. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2013.