Raquel is a graduate of the UMass Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers (2021). Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Rising Phoenix Review, Buzzfeed, and human magazine. She is honored to be the recipient of the 2021 Harvey Swados Award for Fiction.
She spends a great deal of time outdoors with her rescued racing greyhound named Goblin.
You can find more of her writing at @rid.inkskinned.
Both a diary and a novel, a coming-of-age and a love story, her debut BODY’S A BAD MONSTER fluctuates between narrative and confession with two narrators in the same body – and while both are telling the truth; neither is.
BODY’S A BAD MONSTER follows three phases in the life of the narrator – as told through a dissociative state called “Mouse”; Mouse and the narrator take turns inhabiting the “body” to tell the story as it unweaves over time. As Mouse moves in and out of love and pain, the novel uses erasure text to intentionally refuse to engage with male voices or with violence. An experimental, tender, and darkly funny piece of hybrid fiction, BODY’S A BAD MONSTER explores the hard-won humor and joy that it takes to survive through mental illness and suffering in the world today and will be on offer soon.
Raquel is represented by Amanda Orozco.