Rachel Kushner (born October 7, 1968) is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), The Mars Room (2018), and Creation Lake (2024).

[1] Her mother arranged after-school work for her straightening and alphabetizing books at a feminist bookstore when she was five years old, and Kushner says "it was instilled in me that I was going to be a writer of some kind from a young age.

[5] When she was 16, she began her bachelor's degree in political economy at the University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis on United States foreign policy in Latin America.

[21] In 2016, Kushner visited Israel, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War.

[22][23] Edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the book was published as Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation in June 2017.

[24] During the Gaza War, she announced that she supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals.