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Rachel Lyon

Biography

Rachel Lyon

Rachel Lyon is the author of FRUIT OF THE DEAD and SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BOY, a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. An editor emerita for Epiphany, she has taught creative writing at the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Bennington College and other institutions. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Rachel lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and two young children.

Rachel Lyon

Books by Rachel Lyon

Fruit of the Dead
by Rachel Lyon - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, who is head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears.

Self-Portrait with Boy
by Rachel Lyon - Fiction

Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. But the decision to show it is not easy, especially as she forges an intense bond with the boy’s mother. Lu becomes torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.