Exile

09 Aug - 30 Aug 2026

After completing a series of four fiction books set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Rachel Cantor chose Lisbon to begin the creation of a new project.

The writer intends to experiment with writing that blurs the boundaries between fiction and the "real", which mixes autobiography with speculative fiction. During a residency at Casa Mísia, he will search for a voice, a structure and a form that can support his next novel, about childhood loss and exile from language and what we call home.

Rachel Cantor is the author of three novels: A Highly Unlikely Scenario (Melville House, 2014), Good on Paper (Melville House, 2016) and Half-Life of a Stolen Sister (Soho Press, 2023). More than two dozen of his short stories have been published in outlets such as Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review and New England Review; have been included in five anthologies, nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and were finalists for Best American Short Stories, from O. Henry Awards and Best of the Workshops. She has written essays on fiction for NPR, the Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Electric Literature, and other publications, and has received more than three dozen grants to attend artists' colonies in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and Spain. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.