I am an award-winning freelance journalist based in Brooklyn (formerly based in Providence, R.I.), an erstwhile fact-checker at Esquire, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department at Brooklyn College. I recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the New School, where my graduate thesis was a book-length work of narrative journalism about hepatitis C and addiction. This is not a blog, but rather a collection of some of my work.

My favorite stories are about people: people who do unlikely or awe-inspiring things, people with dreams and visions and singular voices, people and communities whose voices are marginalized or forgotten by the popular press. I have a special interest in the criminal justice system and health care for the underserved and disenfranchised, particularly HIV/AIDS. (Before I became a journalist, I worked as an outreach worker and research assistant at an HIV clinic.) I also write news and book reviews, and have been known to write enthusiastically about music, politics, contraception, and goofy antics.

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Advocate>Books>Short Answers>Rachel Harper





Short Answers: Rachel Harper

By Beth Schwartzapfel
April 25, 2005

“Brass Ankle Blues” tells the story of one summer in the life of Nellie Kinkaid, a 15-year-old girl trying to find her way in the world. Her parents have just split up, and Nellie and her father take a road trip to the family’s vacation home in Minnesota. Rachel M. Harper’s first novel is published by Touchstone.

Like Nellie’s, your father is a black poet and your mother is a white woman from Minnesota. How much of Brass Ankle Blues is autobiographical?
In many ways, it is autobiographical, but not because of Nellie. Nellie is one aspect, sure. But so many of the characters, so many of the dynamics, are things that I’ve struggled with. Every character is me.

One of the novel’s themes is the spaces in between: black and white, childhood and adulthood, compassion and anger. Is that one of the dynamics that you’ve struggled with?
I tried to mix a lot of worlds in the book, to come out of the box as multifaceted. Characters that affect me are multifaceted, are the ones who can be so amazing and heroic in some ways, and then just huge failures in others. [I don’t like] this whole separation of breaking down who you represent and what team you play for.

You are also a lesbian, though sexuality plays only a minor role in the novel.
Several love stories unfold throughout the novel, but none are explicitly gay. A central character does explore her sexual identity, but it is not the central “issue” in her life. However, I do think I have, and write with, a “gay sensibility,” which is about letting go of masks and honestly looking at yourself and others. There is a search for balance. There is hope. All of this is what my novel is about.
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