Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner (born October 7, 1968) is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), The Mars Room (2018), and Creation Lake (2024).

Rachel Kushner
Kushner at the 2025 Adelaide Writers' Week
Born	(1968-10-07) October 7, 1968 (age 56) Eugene, Oregon, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist, essayist
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley (BA) Columbia University (MFA)
Period	1996–present
Genre	Literary fiction, essays
Subject	Contemporary art
Notable works	Telex from Cuba (2008) The Flamethrowers (2013) The Mars Room (2018) Creation Lake (2024)
Spouse	Jason Smith
Children	1
Website
rachelkushner.com

Early life

Kushner was born in Eugene, Oregon, the daughter of two scientists she has called "deeply unconventional people from the beatnik generation."^[1][2][3] Her mother is part of a family of St. Louis Unitarians from Cuba while her father is of Jewish ancestry.^[1] Her mother arranged after-school work for her straightening and alphabetizing books at a feminist bookstore when she was five years old, and Kushner says "it was instilled in me that I was going to be a writer of some kind from a young age."^[2][4] Kushner moved with her family to San Francisco in 1979.^[5]

When she was 16, she began her bachelor's degree in political economy at the University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis on United States foreign policy in Latin America.^[4][6] Kushner lived as an exchange student in Italy when she was 18; upon completing her Bachelor of Arts, she lived in San Francisco, working at nightclubs.^[4] At 26, she enrolled in the fiction program at Columbia University and earned a MFA degree in creative writing in 2000.^[7] One of her influences is the American novelist Don DeLillo.^[8]

Career

Novels

Kushner's first novel, Telex from Cuba, was published by Scribner in July 2008. She got the idea for her novel after completing her MFA in 2000, and she made three long trips to Cuba over the six years it took her to write the book.^[4][9] Telex from Cuba was the cover review of the July 6, 2008 issue of The New York Times Book Review, where it was described as a "multi-layered and absorbing" novel whose "sharp observations about human nature and colonialist bias provide a deep understanding of the revolution's causes." Telex from Cuba was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award.^[10][11] Kushner's editor is Nan Graham.^[12]

Kushner's second novel, The Flamethrowers, was published by Scribner in April 2013. Vanity Fair hailed it for its "blazing prose," which "ignites the 70s New York art scene and Italian underground."^{[citation needed]} In The New Yorker, critic James Wood praised the book as "scintillatingly alive. It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures: Kushner is never not telling a story... It succeeds because it is so full of vibrantly different stories and histories, all of them particular, all of them brilliantly alive."^[13] The Flamethrowers was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award,^[14] and it was named a top book of 2013 by^[15] New York, Time, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, Slate, The Daily Beast, Flavorwire, The Millions, The Jewish Daily Forward, and Austin American-Statesman.

Kushner's third novel, The Mars Room, was published by Scribner in May 2018.^[16] In September 2018 it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.^[17]

Her 2024 novel Creation Lake was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and then shortlisted by September 2024.^[18][19] It was also longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.^[20]

Journalism

After completing her MFA, Kushner lived in New York City for eight years, where she was an editor at Grand Street and BOMB. She has written widely on contemporary art, including numerous features in Artforum.^[21]

In 2016, Kushner visited Israel, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War.^[22][23] Edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the book was published as Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation in June 2017.^[24] During the Gaza War, she announced that she supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals. She was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".^[25][26]

Personal life

Kushner lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband Jason Smith and their son Remy.^[27]

Awards and honors

Literary prizes

Year	Work	Award	Category	Result	Ref
2008	Telex from Cuba	National Book Award	Fiction	Shortlisted	[10]
2013	The Flamethrowers	James Tait Black Memorial Prize	Fiction	Shortlisted	[28]
		National Book Award	Fiction	Shortlisted	[14]
2014		Folio Prize	—	Shortlisted	[29][30]
		Women's Prize for Fiction	—	Longlisted	[31]
2015		International Dublin Literary Award	—	Longlisted
2018	The Mars Room	Man Booker Prize	—	Shortlisted
		Goodreads Choice Awards	Fiction	Nominated–20th	[32]
		National Book Critics Circle	Fiction	Finalist	[33]
		Prix Médicis	Étranger	Won
2019		Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence	Fiction	Longlisted	[34]
		Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards	Fiction	Gold Medal
2024	Creation Lake	Booker Prize	—	Shortlisted	[35]
		National Book Award	Fiction	Longlisted	[36]

Honors

• 2013: Guggenheim Fellow^[37]
• 2013: Honorary PhD from Kalamazoo College^[38]
• 2015: Telluride Film Festival (42nd Guest Director)^[39]
• 2016: Harold D Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Bibliography

• Telex from Cuba (2008)
• The Flamethrowers (2013)
• The Strange Case of Rachel K (2015)^[40]
• The Mars Room (2018)
• The Mayor of Leipzig (2021)
• The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–2020 (2021)^[41]
• Creation Lake (2024)^[42][43]