Rebecca Handler is a writer who lives and works in San Francisco. Her stories have been published and awarded in several anthologies, and her debut novel, Edie Richter is Not Alone (Unnamed Press, 2021), received a Kirkus starred review and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
At MacDowell, Rebecca will work on her essay collection inspired by the intricacies of cancer, structured thematically based on the three stages of memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. The essays grapple with the question, do our senses protect us or inflict harm?
While at MacDowell in 2022, Handler completed a draft of her second novel, a story about a woman who begins to feel that her life could be a play, complete with an audience watching. During her 2025 residency, she researched and developed a first draft of a new novel. Research included horse/human interactions, toxic spirituality, and small-scale nonprofit embezzlement scandals.
