About

Rachel Kesselman is a Franco-American writer.

Born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Rachel Kesselman divides her time between Paris and La Muse Artists and Writers Retreat, where she acts as Workshop Director with her husband. 

Her work is forthcoming in Appalachian Review and has been selected as a finalist for North American Review's Terry Tempest Williams Prize. In 2022, her memoir made the long list for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. 

An Appalachian mountain enthusiast, Kesselman has been a writer-in-residence at the Sundress Academy of the Arts in Knoxville, TN and Welcome Hill Studios in West Chesterfield, NH. She has gratefully received the Carlisle Family Scholarship for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop, the Mathey Family Scholarship for the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference, and the Frederick E. Hart Scholarship for Excellence in Nonfiction at the Leopardi Writing Conference in Recanati, Italy. She holds a BA in French and English with a Concentration in Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and a Master's in Comparative Literature and Education from the Sorbonne. She is currently at work on a novel.