Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2013. Her first novel, Telex from Cuba, was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Kushner is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2016 Harold D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Mars Room, her Festival book, was recently longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Los Angeles. Website: rachelkushner.com.

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Reviews of The Mars Room:

• “Kushner has made several friends in the California prison system, and The Mars Room at its liveliest feels like a conduit for them and the people they know” – In Slate
• “The legal system fails to protect them and then fails to adjudicate their crimes with understanding or compassion. ‘The prosecutors all looked like rich, well-rested Republicans'” – In the Washington Post

Interviews:

• “The crime that got her there is slowly revealed through flashbacks to her life as a street-smart stripper working hard to get by, exposing the inextricably tangled web of her circumstances” – In Vogue
• “I wasn’t really looking to gain their trust to get information from them in order to write a novel. I started dialogue with people as a volunteer at an organization that has a case against human rights violations in the women’s prisons in California. It’s called Justice Now, and I started going on their legal visits once a month” – In Maclean’s