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Rachel Kushner

Thursday, December 12, 2024
7:30pm Pacific Time
KQED Broadcast: 12/22/2024
Venue: Sydney Goldstein Theater

City Arts & Lectures members at the Sponsor level are invited to a backstage party following this program. To become a member, visit our membership page here.

As “one of the most gifted authors of her generation,” (NYT Book Review) Rachel Kushner has garnered numerous awards and countless readers over the past fifteen years. Her acclaimed novels (The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex From Cuba) have been translated into twenty six languages, and she has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and twice for the National Book Award in Fiction. Kushner grew up in San Francisco, and spent her early twenties working at nightclubs around the city. Her work follows the fascinating lives of powerful women, including a spy, a prisoner, and an artist. Kushner creates gripping narratives for these characters, while investigating how they fit within racial, class, and national hierarchies. Her fourth novel, Creation Lake, is Kushner’s take on noir, following the intrigue, brutality, and love of a young woman sent to infiltrate a French anarchist collective. Kushner is able to authentically face the painful inequalities of power and money without losing the intimacies and pleasures that make us human.

Jonah Weiner is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and has written for Rolling StoneThe New YorkerWSJ, WIRED and New York, among other places. He’s the co-founder of Blackbird Spyplane, a popular newsletter covering style and culture.

A limited number of tickets include a copy of Kushner’s new novel, Creation Lake.

A limited number of student/educator tickets are available. Sign up here.