Rachel Aviv

Rachel Aviv
Aviv at the 2022 National Book Festival
Alma mater	Brown University
Occupation	Writer
Notable work	Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (2022)
Awards	Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award (2010) Whiting Award (2020)

Rachel Aviv is an American writer. Being a staff writer at The New Yorker, she wrote the book Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us in 2022.[1] She frequently writes about psychiatry; Tablet has referred to Aviv as "Janet Malcolm’s successor."[2]

Early life

Aviv was raised in Eastern Michigan. Her parents are divorced. When she was six, she was admitted to the Children's Hospital of Michigan where she received six weeks of treatment for anorexia nervosa. She writes about the experience in the first chapter of her book Strangers to Ourselves. She was thought to be the youngest anorexia patient in the country. Her symptoms subsided after several months.[2][3][4]

She attended the private school Cranbrook-Kingswood, where she was co-captain of the girls' tennis team. She graduated from Brown University in 2004.[5][6]

Career

Aviv won a 2020 Whiting Award in creative non-fiction[7][8] and a 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. She has investigated Teen Challenge,[9] guardianship abuse,[10] family courts, and the possible innocence of convicted serial murderer and British neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby.[11]

In 2022, her book Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[12] Strangers to Ourselves was selected for The New York Times's "10 Best Books of 2022" list.[13] The book was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.[14]

Bibliography

• —— (2022). Strangers to Ourselves. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

References

1. "Q&A: New Yorker's Rachel Aviv on making well-worn topics fresh". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
2. Roth, Marco (September 6, 2022). "Rachel Aviv's Journey to the Ends of Psychiatry". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
3. "An Interview with Rachel Aviv". The Oxonian Review. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
4. Kisner, Jordan (2022-09-13). "The Diagnosis Trap". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
5. "May 12, 2000 - Image 87". The Detroit Jewish News Digital Archives. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
6. "Complicated Truth". Brown Alumni Magazine. 2016-03-18. Retrieved 2022-10-16.
7. "Rachel Aviv". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
8. "Rachel Aviv". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
9. "How Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker exposed the "troubled teen industry"". Nieman Storyboard. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
10. "How the Elderly Lose Their Rights". The New Yorker. 2017-10-02. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
11. Aviv, Rachel (2024-05-13). "A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-05-15.
12. Hu, Jane (2022-12-23). "What Their Psychiatrists Won't Tell You". Vulture. Retrieved 2024-03-10.
13. "The 10 Best Books of 2022". The New York Times. November 29, 2022. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
14. Varno, David (2023-02-01). "NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE ANNOUNCES FINALISTS FOR PUBLISHING YEAR 2022". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2023-02-03.

External links

• National Book Festival Author Talk: Rachel Aviv, August 29, 2022