Rachel Howard is a writer of fiction, personal essays, memoir, and dance criticism. Her debut novel, The Risk of Us, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt April 2019, and is garnering strong advance praise. Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation, calls it "An emotionally complex and amazingly suspenseful novel about love and fear." Belle Boggs, author of The Art of Waiting, says: "Rachel Howard has given us a portrait of family-building and attachment that is at once beautiful and painful, serious and funny, page-turning and insightful. I was deeply moved by this novel, a powerful reminder of the risks we take on whenever we love anyone." Rachel’s first book was a memoir about her father's unsolved murder, The Lost Night. She was interviewed about the book by Ira Glass for an episode of This American Life. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and a fellow of the MacDowell Colony. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, ZYZZYVA, Waxwing (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), O Magazine, OZY, Canteen, Berfrois, the Arroyo Literary Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Formerly an arts journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, she has published arts and dance writing in The New Yorker Online, the New York Times, Ballet Review, and the Hudson Review, among other publications. She lives in Nevada City, CA, where she founded Yuba Writers’ Workshops, and a reading series, Yuba Lit, now a fiscally sponsored project of the Nevada County Arts Council. In her mid-thirties, after a lifetime of thinking she was a terrible singer, Rachel learned to sing in an Oakland piano bar called The Alley. She still goes to The Alley about twice a month to be with friends and sing.