Content Warning: This section mentions death by suicide.

Rachel Kushner is an American author known for the novels Telex From Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018). Her work is popular with readers and critics alike, and her novels have been recognized with nominations for the National Book Award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and others. Creation Lake was an immediate success and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction soon after its publication.

Kushner was born in Eugene, Oregon, to two scientists whom Kushner describes as unconventional beatniks. Their influence is evident in her writing—for instance, Creation Lake’s depiction of radical leftist politics is rooted in her parents’ worldview. Her mother’s family origins are in Cuba—Kushner’s first novel, Telex From Cuba, focuses on a family of Anglo-expatriates living in Cuba during the years leading up to the Revolution. Kushner’s parents supported both her intellectual growth and her interest in writing, and Kushner credits her mother in particular for early lessons on feminism. While she was at the University of California, Berkeley, Kushner completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in political economy with an emphasis on US foreign policy in Latin America.