Rachel Newcomb

I'm a cultural anthropologist and writer of ethnographies and fiction. I love writing and traveling, and especially observing and learning from other cultures. I have a creative writing master's degree from Johns Hopkins but couldn't pay the bills with it, so I went to grad school for anthropology at Princeton. Anthropologists-in-training get to spend about two years living in the country they are studying, so I lived in Morocco and did research on Moroccan women in the city of Fes. Now I'm a full-time college professor, but I always try to find time to write fiction. I also write book reviews for the Washington Post and blog on my cultural observations for Huffington Post, about anything ranging from the disappearance of the Mediterranean diet in Morocco to the popularity of Zumba.My latest novel is THE GIFT, about a graduate student couple at Princeton and the undergraduate they hire to serve as their egg donor. The husband, Peter, can't get over his days as a Peace Corps worker in Morocco, while the wife, Elise, is an editor but is considering putting her career on hold to pursue pregnancy as a full-time occupation. Enter Celia, a scholarship student from South Carolina, an aspiring writer who feels a little like a fish out of water in the elite Ivy League environment. If you'd like to read more about my anthropology books, which are strictly about Morocco (nothing made-up!), you can check out my Amazon page, which has links to all my books.