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Rachel Louise Snyder

Biography

Rachel Louise Snyder

Rachel Louise Snyder is the author of FUGITIVE DENIM; the memoir WOMEN WE BURIED, WOMEN WE BURNED; the novel WHAT WE'VE LOST IS NOTHING; and NO VISIBLE BRUISES, a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the Hillman Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, LA Times Book Prize and Kirkus Award. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate and elsewhere. A 2020-2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Snyder is a Professor of Creative Writing and Journalism at American University. She lives in Washington, DC.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Books by Rachel Louise Snyder

Women We Buried, Women We Burned: A Memoir
by Rachel Louise Snyder - Memoir, Nonfiction

Rachel Louise Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually travelling the globe. In places like India, Tibet and Niger, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In Cambodia, where she lived for six years, she watched a country reckon with the horrors of its own recent history. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a new perspective on old family wounds, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.

What We've Lost Is Nothing
by Rachel Louise Snyder - Fiction

Nestled on the edge of Chicago’s gritty west side, Oak Park is a suburb in flux. To the west, theaters and shops frame posh houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. To the east lies a neighborhood still recovering from urban decline. In the center of the community sits Ilios Lane, a pristine cul-de-sac dotted with quiet homes that bridge the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty. On the first warm day in April, Mary Elizabeth McPherson, a lifelong resident of Ilios Lane, skips school with her friend Sofia. As the two experiment with a heavy dose of ecstasy in Mary Elizabeth’s dining room, a series of home invasions rocks their neighborhood. At first the community is determined to band together, but rising suspicions soon threaten to destroy the world they were attempting to create.