Rachel Heng

Last updated

Rachel Heng
Rachel heng 126584.jpg
Reading at Fall for the Book, 12 October 2023
BornSingapore
OccupationNovelist, short story writer
Education Columbia University
(BA in Comparative Literature)
University of Texas at Austin
(MFA in Fiction)
Notable worksSuicide Club (2018)
The Great Reclamation (2023)
Website
rachelhengqp.com

Rachel Heng (born 1988) is a Singaporean novelist and the author of literary dystopian novel Suicide Club (2018) and award-winning The Great Reclamation (2023). Her short fiction has been published in many literary journals including The New Yorker , Glimmer Train , Tin House , and The Minnesota Review . Her fiction has received recognition from the Pushcart Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence, and the New American Voices Award by the Institute for Immigration Research, and she has been profiled by the BBC, Electric Literature , and other publications.

Contents

Early life and education

Rachel Heng majored in Comparative Literature at Columbia University, graduating in 2011. [1] She then worked in the private equity industry in London. [2] She received a James A. Michener Fellowship to pursue a MFA in fiction and screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers. [3]

Career

Heng's first novel Suicide Club was published by Hachette's Sceptre imprint in the UK, and Macmillan's Henry Holt imprint in the US in July 2018. The manuscript won a six-figure publishing deal after a bidding auction between international publishers. [4] The novel is a piece of dystopian fiction set in a world of compulsory state-managed longevity, and satirizes contemporary culture's obsession with health. [5] The plot centers on a group of rebels called the "Suicide Club" which circulates secretly-filmed videos of their own suicides as a form of release and protest against the health-obsessed establishment. [6] The novel was inspired by dystopian pieces such as George Orwell's Animal Farm and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale . [2] Heng's novel was named a most anticipated novel of the summer by The Huffington Post, Gizmodo , The Irish Times , The Millions , Bustle, Nylon and Elle. [7] Critics have compared Suicide Club favourably to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, [6] [5] Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. [8] Suicide Club is pending translation into 10 languages worldwide. [7] [ as of? ]

Her second novel The Great Reclamation was published by Riverhead Books in March 2023. [9] [10] It won the New American Voices Award in 2023, [11] [12] was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence 2024, [13] and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice [14] and a "Best Book of 2023 So Far" by The New Yorker [15] and Amazon Books. [16]

Heng's short fiction has been published widely in literary journals such as The New Yorker, [17] Glimmer Train , Tin House , Prairie Schooner , The Offing, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and The Minnesota Review . [18] Her fiction has received a Pushcart special mention and Prairie Schooner 's Jane Geske Award. [18] She has written essays and features for The Telegraph , [19] The Rumpus , [20] Grazia [21] and Catapult. [22] Her essay "On Becoming a Person of Colour' was one of The Rumpus's top read posts of 2018, [23] a 2018 Staff Pick [24] and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. [25] She was listed by The Independent as one of ten emerging authors to look out for in 2018 [26] and has been profiled by outlets such as the BBC, [2] Electric Literature [27] and The Straits Times . [3] In 2021, she was longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. [28]

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zadie Smith</span> British writer (born 1975)

Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colson Whitehead</span> American novelist (born 1969)

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigrid Nunez</span> American writer

Sigrid Nunez is an American writer, best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Cusk</span> British writer (born 1967)

Rachel Cusk FRSL is a British novelist and writer.

Eaton Hamilton is a Canadian short story writer, novelist, essayist and poet, who goes by "Hamilton", and uses they/their pronouns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheryl Strayed</span> American writer (born 1968)

Cheryl Strayed is an American writer and podcast host. She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015). Wild, the story of Strayed's 1995 hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, is an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Porochista Khakpour</span> American writer (born 1978)

Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Kushner</span> American writer (born 1968)

Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), The Mars Room (2018), and Creation Lake (2024).

Emily Raboteau is an American fiction writer, essayist, and professor of creative writing at the City College of New York.

The Rumpus is an online literary magazine founded by Stephen Elliott, and launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as original fiction and poetry. The site runs two subscription-based book clubs and two subscription-based letters programs, Letters in the Mail and Letters for Kids.

Antoine Wilson is a Canadian-American novelist and short story writer. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, and later lived in Southern California, Central California, and Saudi Arabia. He attended UCLA and Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is a contributing editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steph Cha</span> Korean American novelist

Steph Cha is a Korean American novelist and fiction writer, who has released three novels in the crime fiction genre about her detective protagonist Juniper Song: Follow Her Home (2013), Beware Beware (2014), and Dead Soon Enough (2015). Her most recent book, stand-alone crime fiction novel Your House Will Pay (2019), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery.

Sari Wilson is an American novelist and writer. She has written prose and comics, and is the author of the novel Girl Through Glass. Wilson's short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in literary journals such as AGNI, the Oxford American, and Slice. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Catapult.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Flournoy</span> American writer

Angela Flournoy is an American writer. Her debut novel The Turner House (2015) won the First Novelist Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She was also listed on the National Book Awards' 5 under 35 list, nominated by her former teacher ZZ Packer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melissa Broder</span> Poet and writer

Melissa Broder is an American author, essayist and poet. Her work includes the novels The Pisces, Milk Fed, and Death Valley ; the poetry collection Last Sext ; and the essay collection So Sad Today, as well as the Twitter feed also titled So Sad Today, on which the book is based. Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle, Vice, Vogue Italia, and New York magazine‘s The Cut.

Elizabeth McKenzie is an American author and editor. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has received a Pushcart Prize, and her work has been recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naima Coster</span> American novelist

Naima Coster is a Dominican-American writer known for her debut novel, Halsey Street, which was published in January 2018. Coster is the recipient of numerous awards including a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Jeremy Tiang is a Singaporean writer, translator and playwright based in New York City. Tiang won the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for English fiction for his debut novel, State of Emergency, published in 2017.

<i>Pure Colour</i> Novel by Sheila Heti

Pure Colour is a novel by Canadian author Sheila Heti. Published by Knopf Canada, the book won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction.

<i>The Great Reclamation</i> 2023 novel by Rachel Heng

The Great Reclamation is a 2023 novel by Singaporean novelist Rachel Heng, published by Riverhead Books. Heng's second novel, it follows the life of a family in Singapore during the turbulence of World War II and amid nation building efforts through the fifties and sixties. Several publications listed the novel as one of the best books of the year, and it was a finalist for several prizes including the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

References

  1. ↑ "Bookshelf". Columbia College Today. 27 June 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 Rackham, Annabel (16 July 2018). "What if burgers and beer were illegal?". BBC. Archived from the original on 16 November 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  3. 1 2 Ho, Olivia (18 July 2017). "Singaporean's debut novel scores six-figure sums from US, UK publishers in auction". Straits Times . Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  4. ↑ General, Ryan. "Singaporean Author Lands Six-Figure Deals From U.S., U.K. Publishers for Her First Novel". nextshark.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  5. 1 2 Gilmartin, Sarah. "Suicide Club by Rachel Heng: Who wants to live forever?". Irish Times . Archived from the original on 21 July 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  6. 1 2 Smith, Rosa Inocencio (31 August 2018). "'Suicide Club' Takes On the Tyranny of Wellness". The Atlantic . Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  7. 1 2 "Rachel Heng in conversation w/Liz Moore". Blue Stoop. Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  8. ↑ Stallings, M. Brianna (12 October 2018). "Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng". Austin Chronicle . Retrieved 2 December 2018.
  9. ↑ Treisman, Deborah (31 May 2021). "Rachel Heng on Societal Cruelty". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  10. ↑ "The Great Reclamation". Rachel Heng. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  11. ↑ "Heng wins 2023 New American Voices Award". George Mason University. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  12. ↑ "The New American Voices Award". Institute for Immigration Research. Retrieved 7 November 2024.
  13. ↑ JCARMICHAEL (16 October 2023). "2024 Winners". Reference & User Services Association (RUSA). Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  14. ↑ "9 New Books We Recommend This Week". The New York Times. 4 May 2023. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  15. ↑ "The Best Books We Read This Week". The New Yorker. 25 January 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  16. ↑ "Amazon.com: Best Books of the Year So Far: Books". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  17. ↑ Heng, Rachel (25 May 2021). ""Before the Valley"". New Yorker . Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  18. 1 2 "RACHEL HENG: Turning Rejections into Motivation - 88 Cups of Tea with Yin Chang web". 88cupsoftea.com. 6 July 2018. Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  19. ↑ Heng, Rachel (10 July 2018). "I was a City worker addicted to exercise". Daily Telegraph . ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  20. ↑ Heng, Rachel (10 July 2018). "On Becoming A Person Of Color". therumpus.net. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  21. ↑ "'Clean Eating Is Just Another Way To Punish Ourselves'". Grazia. 24 July 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  22. ↑ "You Bet Your Life: 'Death Bonds,' the Investments That Want You Dead | Rachel Heng". Catapult. 2 August 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  23. ↑ "The Rumpus Top 20 Of 2018". The Rumpus.net. 28 December 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  24. ↑ "What To Read When: Rumpus Staff Favorites 2018 - The Rumpus.net". therumpus.net. 14 December 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  25. ↑ "The Rumpus 2018 Pushcart Prize Nominees!". therumpus.net. 16 November 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  26. ↑ Bradbury, Sarah. "Emerging authors to look out for in 2018". The Independent . Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  27. ↑ Chen, Karissa (12 July 2018). "What if You Could Live Forever?". Electric Literature. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  28. ↑ "Fifteen authors have been longlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award | The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award". www.shortstoryaward.co.uk. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  29. ↑ "A Fishing Family at Sea in a Changing Singapore". The New York Times .
  30. ↑ "Rachel Heng on her novel 'The Great Reclamation'". NPR.
  31. ↑ "My Decade of Temporary Homes". Esquire. 22 March 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
  32. ↑ "Reshaping a Country: On Rachel Heng's "The Great Reclamation"". Los Angeles Review of Books. 7 April 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.