Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner
Born	1968 (age 48–49) Eugene, Oregon, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist, Essayist
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Period	1996–present
Genre	fiction
Notable works	The Flamethrowers (2013), Telex from Cuba (2008)

Rachel Kushner (born 1968) is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008) and The Flamethrowers (2013). She lives with her husband and their son in Los Angeles.

Kushner was born in Eugene, Oregon, the daughter of two scientists whom she describes as "deeply unconventional people from the beatnik generation." Her mother arranged afterschool work for her straightening and alphabetizing books at a feminist bookstore when she was five years old, and Kusher says "it was instilled in me that I was going to be a writer of some kind from a young age." Kushner moved with her family to San Francisco in 1979.

When she was sixteen she began her Bachelor's in Political Economy at UC Berkeley with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. Kusher lived as an exchange student in Italy when she was eighteen; and upon completing her Bachelor of Arts, Kushner lived in San Francisco, worked at nightclubs, rode a Moto Guzzi, and then decided to become serious about writing. At twenty-six she enrolled in the fiction program at Columbia University and she earned her MFA in creative writing in 2000.

After completing her MFA, Kushner lived in New York City for 8 years, where she was an editor at Grand Street and BOMB. She has written widely on contemporary art, including numerous features in Artforum. She is currently an editor of Soft Targets, praised by The New York Times as an "excellent, Brooklyn-based journal of art, fiction and poetry."

Ms. Kushner decided to withdraw from participating in the gala following PEN nominations in March 2015, wherein PEN American Center gave its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose staff had been murdered by Islamists in Paris three months before. She was one of six authors to do so, the others being Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, and Taiye Selasi. Kushner criticized the magazine’s “cultural intolerance” and support for “a kind of forced secular view,” an accusation that was denounced by numerous commentators. Among other critics, Salman Rushdie criticized Kushner and her fellow protesters as "fellow travellers" of "fanatical Islam."

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