Kushner is the author of two novels, "The Flamethrowers" and "Telex from Cuba,” both finalists for the National Book Award, as well as a collection of short prose, "The Strange Case of Rachel K." She is a Guggenheim fellow and winner of the Howard D Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Paris Review.