Photographer: Juliana Tan

Photographer: Juliana Tan

Rachel Heng is the author of two novels, most recently The Great Reclamation (Riverhead, 2023), which won the New American Voices Award 2023 and was nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the HWA Gold Crown Award. The Great Reclamation was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of 2023 by TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Amazon Books, Town & Country Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, a Sarah Selects Amazon Book Club and an April 2023 Indie Next pick. Her first novel, Suicide Club  (Henry Holt / Sceptre, 2018), was a national bestseller in Singapore and has been translated into 10 languages.

Rachel's short fiction has been published in The New YorkerMcSweeney’s Quarterly, Best New Singaporean Short Stories and elsewhere, longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award and listed among Best American Short Stories’ Distinguished Stories. Her non-fiction has been listed among Best American Essays’ Notable Essays and has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire and elsewhere. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the National Arts Council of Singapore.

Born and raised in Singapore, Rachel received her BA in Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University and her MFA in Fiction and Playwriting from UT Austin's Michener Center for Writers. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University.