Rae Del Bianco grew up in Bucks County, PA, where she raised and sold beef cattle throughout her teenage years.  She attended Duke University on a full merit scholarship as a Robertson Scholar, has held residencies at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency and Yaddo, and received the John and Renee Grisham fellowship at the University of Mississippi, where she fought alongside Justice for Jay Lee in the wake of a young gay man’s unsolved murder. Her latest work continues to revolve around her experience growing up queer in the most rural corners of America, as well as her perspective as an avid naturalist, horseman, hunter, and self-taught taxidermist.

Her first novel, Rough Animals, garnered comparisons to the work of Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, and was awarded the Prix littéraire Lucien-Barrière, an accolade she shares with William Styron, Norman Mailer, and John Grisham.

She lives in a cabin in the Mojave Desert, California.

photographed by Eunice Beck