American Innovations

Rivka Galchen received her MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Her essay on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics was published in The Believer, and she is the recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Galchen lives in New York City. She is the author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances.

'Inventive and appealing' Independent on Sunday

'The American short story's vintage year continues ... Gently, Galchen interrogates the nature and necessity of innovation with results that prove hopeful, funny and innovative' Max Liu, Independent

'Dazed ... Strikingly beautiful ... Galchen's stories are funny and inventive. Many of them slyly translate the concerns of 19th-century fiction - money, property, gender - into the affectless, ironic voice of modern American fiction ... One of the pleasures of American Innovations is the way the stories quietly echo and seep into one another... The prose is always expertly controlled' David Wolf, Guardian

Praise for 'Atmospheric Disturbances':

'What is strongest in the novel is the delicacy with which Galchen evokes the bewildering randomness of Leo's visionary insanity ... An original and affecting novel, one that knows how to move from the comic to the painful.' James Wood, New Yorker

'Genuinely suspenseful, fresh and wry ... Galchen is a writer to be watched.' The Economist

'A playful and moving novel.' Daily Telegraph

'Playful yet profound, Murakami-esque yet original, analytical yet heartbreaking. It's an absolutely stunning and unforgettable debut.' Vendela Vida, author of 'Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name'

'A powerful novel about love, longing, Doppler radar, and the true appreciation of a nice cookie with your tea. "Atmospheric Disturbances" is fantastic.' Nathan Englander, author of 'The Ministry of Special Cases'