Rachel Yoder
“If there’s some part that we need to be in touch with, it might be the chaotic part of ourselves.... Art gives us a place to be irrational, be wild, be an animal. And then it’s so lovely because we also have our big rational brain to give it order.”
Rachel Yoder is the author of Nightbitch (2021), named a best book of the year by Esquire and Vulture and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. The novel was adapted for the screen in 2024 by writer and director Marielle Heller, starring Amy Adams. Currently Nightbitch is available in 14 international editions.
Rachel’s stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and The Sun, among others. With Mark Polanzak, she is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process and host of The Fail Safe, a podcast about the role of failure in the creative process.
Formerly the 23/24 Trias Writer-in-Residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Rachel is Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at the University of Iowa. Her adaptation of Laura van den Berg's short story "The Pitch" is currently in development with Big Indie.
“A feral, unholy marriage of Tillie Olsen and Kafka—Nightbitch is an incredible feat.”