Rachel Cantor

About Me

My stories have appeared in magazines such as the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Fence, and Volume 1 Brooklyn. They have been anthologized, nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, short-listed by both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories, and awarded runner-up Bridport and Graywolf/SLS Prizes. I have also been awarded fellowships to more than a dozen artists’ colonies, both in the U.S. and abroad, as well as generous scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writing Conferences.

I live in New York, city of my heart, in the writerly borough of Brooklyn, but have at various points made my home in most U.S. states between Virginia and Vermont. In addition to writing fiction, I freelance as a writer for nonprofits that work in developing countries. In that capacity, I’ve worked everywhere from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe (most recently in Nigeria, Senegal, and Laos). I spent much of my adolescence in Rome, and as a young one, I wandered the world, working on food festivals in Melbourne, Australia, and European jazz festivals in France; living in rural Gujarat while interning for a Gandhian nonprofit; and teaching Afghan women refugees in Peshwar, Pakistan. I am a native New Englander; my love for the Boston Red Sox is fanatical. I am, always, at work on another book.


To learn more about me, check out these interviews, essays, and podcasts

Interview, Lit Hub Asks: 5 Writers, 7 Questions
Interview, Vulgar History Podcast
Interview, I’m a Writer But Podcast
Interview, Historical Novels Review
The Big Idea, John Scalzi
Interview, Writerly Bites Podcast
Interview, Leslie Pietrzyk
Interview, Deborah Kalb
Interview, Deborah Ratcliffe
Interview, Book Pilgrim
Panel Discussion/Reading, Center for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona
Interview, Woodstock Booktalk podcast
Interview, tk podcast
Radio Interview, Writers on Writing, KUCI-FM
Radio Interview, First Draft, Aspen Public Radio
Interview, Salon.com
Translation, Intimacy, and Secret Histories: An Interview with Rachel Cantor, Electric Literature
Self-Interview, The Nervous Breakdown
Interview, Brooklyn Magazine
Interview, Caroline Leavittville
Interview, Book Culture
Interview, Jewish Book Council
Blurring the Genre Line, Interview, Publishers’ Weekly
Interview, Brad Listi’s Other People podcast
Book Brahmin, interview, Shelf Awareness
Translating Magpies: A Writer’s Travails in Translation, Asymptote
My First Time, Quivering Pen
Translating Shalhevetyah, Jewish Book Council
Writing a Rabbi, Jewish Book Council
Introducing 2014 Literary Debutante Rachel Cantor, interview, One Story.
Interview, Joyland podcast
Peer Review: Rachel Cantor & Jeremy P. Bushnell on Their Debut Novels, The Quietus
Interview, Paste Magazine
My First Anthology, Quivering Pen
Interview, Read Her Like an Open Book
Interview, The Qwillery
Five Books for the Apocalypse, Books Bird

And here’s some fun stuff I did

Book Notes, Large-Hearted Boy
Six Ridiculous Questions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
If my Book, Monkeybicycle
Page 69 Test
Memory Voids: A Conversation with Elizabeth Kadetsky on “The Memory Eaters,” Los Angeles Review of Books
The 10 Worst Jobs in Books, Publishers’ Weekly
The Best Fiction Featuring Real Writers, The Guardian
My Guilty Pleasure, NPR
Book Notes, Good on Paper, Large-Hearted Boy
If My Book, Monkeybicycle
18 Fantastic Holiday Reads for 2016, Co-operative Travel

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