Joanna Rakoff

Joanna Rakoff (born May 8, 1972) is an American novelist and memoirist.

Early life Rakoff was born in Nyack, New York, in 1972.

Education Between 1990 and 1994, Rakoff studied English literature at Oberlin College in Ohio. Between 1994 and 1995, she completed an MA in English literature at UCL in London.

Rakoff's first novel, A Fortunate Age, was published in 2009. It received largely positive reviews, was included on many Best of 2009 lists, including NPR, Elle, and Booklist, and received the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers, an award previously won by Gary Shteyngart, Nathan Englander, and Laura Vapnyar. The novel was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller and was published in France by Presses de la Cité.

In 2010, Rakoff created a radio documentary about Salinger and his fan mail for BBC Radio 4, Hey Mr Salinger. Before it aired, the script was circulated in the British publishing industry; an editor read it and encouraged Rakoff to expand it into a memoir about her time working for the agency. This memoir became Rakoff's second book, My Salinger Year, published in 2014 to broad critical acclaim. It was picked by The Guardian'''s Rachel Cooke as one of the best books of 2014. It has been published in France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, India, Australia, and the UK. In France, it was a finalist for the Elle Prix de Lectrices. In the Netherlands, it was a finalist for the WIZO Prize.

The book was turned into a 2020 Canadian film of the same name starring Margaret Qualley as Rakoff and Sigourney Weaver as her boss, directed by Philippe Falardeau. It opened the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. The film had its first theatrical release in Australia in January 2021. In March 2021, it opened in the U.S., where it was released by IFC, followed by a May release in the UK, and releases around the world.

Before publishing A Fortunate Age, Rakoff worked as a freelance literary journalist and critic, contributing to the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, the Guardian, and the New York Times, as well as magazines like Vogue, Marie Claire, and O, The Oprah Magazine. For many years, she served as a contributing editor for the literary trade magazine Poets & Writers, where she wrote a long-running column "First", featuring debut writers, as well as profiles of writers such as T. C. Boyle and Jonathan Franzen. In 2004, she became the books editor of a new online arts and culture magazine, Tablet, then known as Nextbook. In 2005, she was promoted to features editor, and from 2006 to 2008 she served as editor-in-chief.

Rakoff is under contract with Little, Brown for a new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, which excavates a difficult family secret. The story of this memoir is recounted on the 10/21/2019 episode of Dani Shapiro's podcast Family Secrets. She regularly contributes book reviews to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Vogue.

Personal life

Rakoff lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, the composer Keeril Makan, a professor at MIT. She has three children.

BibliographyA Fortunate Age. New York: Scribner, 2009. .My Salinger Year''. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014. .