Rachel Kadish

Rachel Kadish’ work has been read on NPR and has appeared in The New York Times, Paris Review, and Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her most recent novel, The Weight of Ink, received a National Jewish Book Award and was a USA Today bestseller. She has been the Koret writer-in-residence at Stanford University and a fellow of the NEA, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Harvard/Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute. She is a spokesperson for Artists for Understanding.

Set in a reeling Poland following the 2010 Smolensk air disaster, The Belnord explores the long echo of war crimes for descendants of bystanders as well as victims. The novel traces the colliding fates of three characters: a gay Polish Catholic teen in a town with an uneasy past; an American scientist caught in Poland’s climate change upheaval; and a Holocaust refugee born in a DP camp. The Belnord explores how we’re haunted by the past, and what it takes on a human level for us to move forward.