Rachel Toor is the author of four works of nonfiction and one novel. Her most recent book is Misunderstood: Why The Humble Rat May Be Your Best Pet Ever (FSG 2016). She is a professor in the graduate creative writing program at Eastern Washington University. Her work has been published in a wide variety of places, including The New York Times, The LA Times, Ploughshares, SB Nation, Glamour, Reader’s Digest, Runner’s World and JAMA, the journal of
the American Medical Association, and she writes a monthly for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her next book, which will be published by the University of Chicago Press in Fall 2017, is for high school students on writing the college application essay. She graduated from Yale University and received an MFA from the University of Montana.