Rachel Harkai is a graduate of the Creative Writing and Comparative Literature programs at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A 2010 Kresge Artist Fellow and recipient of four Hopwood Awards for both poetry and nonfiction, Harkai is the former host of the Living Writers Show, a literary talk show on WCBN-FM 88.3 Ann Arbor, and a former Writer-in-Residence for the Hub City Writers Project of Spartanburg, South Carolina.

From 2008 to 2010 Harkai was a Writer-in-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a non-profit organization that places professional writers in Detroit Public Schools as teachers and mentors. Her work has appeared in Poor Claudia, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, Spork, Portland Review and elsewhere.