Rachel Pastan

Rachel Pastan (born ) is an American novelist and educator whose work combines themes of art, science, and women's creativity. Her novels include Alena, set in the contemporary art world, and In the Field (2021), inspired by geneticist Barbara McClintock.

Biography Pastan was born , the daughter of poet Linda Pastan, and grew up in suburban Maryland. By the age of six, she had decided to become a writer, inspired by watching her mother work at her IBM Selectric typewriter. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College, where she published her first short story in The Georgia Review at age 19, and completed an Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1990.

Before publishing her first novel, Pastan wrote three unpublished novels and a short-story collection, receiving numerous rejections over more than a decade. She published her first book, This Side of Married, in 2004. In interviews, she described the project as a way to help connect readers with books and to create a community space centered on literature. Lady of the Snakes (Harcourt, 2008), about a scholar who balances motherhood and academic ambition while rethinking authorship and attribution; coverage emphasized its treatment of work-life questions. Set at a Cape Cod art museum and conceived as a "love letter to contemporary art," the novel explores artistic passion and the boundary between art and life through the story of a young curator working in the shadow of her vanished predecessor. and noted by reviewers and literary outlets upon its release. In 2015, Longreads featured a chapter from the novel with an introduction by A. N. Devers. In the Field (Delphinium Books, 2021), a novel inspired by geneticist Barbara McClintock, follows a pioneering woman scientist navigating the male-dominated world of twentieth-century genetics while confronting questions of discovery, recognition, and personal sacrifice. It was selected for the National Book Foundation’s inaugural Science + Literature program in 2022.