Rafael Frumkin | Humanities and Social Sciences | SIU

Rafael Frumkin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of three books: The Comedown (2018), Confidence (2023), and Bugsy (2024). His fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Guernica, Hazlitt, The Washington Post, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, The Cut, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others.

He teaches courses in novel- and short story-writing as well as creative nonfiction and literary journalism. A trans and queer artist, his work focuses on the experience of marginalization through the lenses of dark comedy and satire. He aims to write the radical queer representation he wants to see in fiction and encourages his students to do the same.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE:

• LGBTQIA2S+ issues
• humor writing
• realism
• speculative fiction

Social media: @jeansvaljeans (Instagram and Twitter)