Who is this Rachael Kuintzle person anyway
author, labor organizer, scientist, educator, public speaker, and obligate bipedal hominid
Welcome, readers!
This post is an overview of who I am for new readers, old readers, and my curious 16-year-old self…
Excerpt from my diary at age 16: Future Rachael, don’t you wish you could tell me what you’re like? I know I wish I could tell past Rachael what I’m like. I remember picturing myself at age 16 when I was younger and wondering. Haha. Well, when did you get married? Where do you live? What’s your profession? Do you think I’m stupid and immature? Because sometimes I do.
First I’ll go over my books and stories, then I’ll share how my other activities (science, labor organizing, teaching, and speaking) intersect with and influence my writing. And just for the hell of it, I’ll end with some fun facts and embarrassing anecdotes.
WRITING
Novels
As of May 2025, it’s been almost two years since I finished my PhD in biochemistry at Caltech and left science to pursue a career writing science fiction. I now have three novels in various states of completion.
The Ghosts of Gadolin is a young adult (YA) sci-fi mystery novel with ecological horror vibes in the vein of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. The main character’s emotional arc draws heavily from my journey of learning I was autistic and beginning to live my truth (a journey I shared in an abbreviated form at a Moth StorySLAM competition—see the Live Storytelling section below). My coauthor Samuel Clamons and I are currently implementing the revisions suggested by our editor, the fantastic Meghan McCullough, with whom we serendipitously connected during her brief freelance availability before she was hired at Bloomsbury Publishing! Here’s a cover mockup:
The Ghosts of Gadolin is the first book in a planned duology, though it works as a standalone story. Sam and I have a rough draft of book two, but it’ll have to change quite a bit to adjust for our book one revisions.
I am also writing my first solo book, titled Surface Tension. This one’s a romance-forward YA sci-fi novel about a bioengineered mermaid, with a villain like Joe from Netflix’s romantic thriller You:
Short stories
I don’t write a lot of short fic because I prefer creating deeply complex characters with strong arcs and multiple beautiful, messy relationships—stories which tend to be novel-length. However, I do have four shorter works either published or forthcoming.
INNER SPACE AND OUTER THOUGHTS
Many of you know me as the editor-in-chief and a contributing author of Caltech’s first sci-fi anthology, Inner Space and Outer Thoughts: Speculative Fiction From Caltech and JPL Authors. This was the project that gave me the courage to pursue a career in fiction writing.
I have two short stories in this collection. “Teaspoons” is about an Alzheimer’s disease researcher whose mom is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s—it explores the grief of losing someone to a neurodegenerative disease through both an emotional and scientific lens. “The Bittersweet Magic of Neuroplasticity” is a very short story/prose poem about the neuroscience of falling in and out of love. You can read both of my stories here.
If you’re curious about how this book came into existence, I wrote up a fairly comprehensive history in three parts:
OTHER STORIES
In March 2025, my flash fiction story “The Hydra vulgaris Self-Reassembly Experiment: An Anarchist Fairy Tale” was published in Anarchist Fictions Journal. This is a science-inspired magical realism piece about the power of the collective, featuring the immortal freshwater polyp, Hydra. You can read it in this post.
I have a new solarpunk/eco-horror novelette scheduled for publication in 2026 in the upcoming Solarpunk Conflicts anthology from editor W Kees Schuller! It’s called The Surface of the Sea and Other Inviolable Borders, and here’s the hook:
Mariana is the only mermaid in the world, created in the late twenty-first century and hidden in a San Diego fertility clinic’s freezer for two hundred years until a would-be mother implanted the mislabeled embryo. But Mariana is no longer the only bioengineered mutant in La Jolla.
It’s set in a relatively optimistic future on the backdrop of an inadvertent ecological war between San Diego and Los Angeles, who disagree on how to adapt their ocean ecosystems to climate change. Stay tuned for the anthology pre-order link!
Creative nonfiction (including live storytelling)
Creative nonfiction was my first literary love, probably because I’ve been keeping a diary since before I knew how to spell. My first-ever published work was a short memoir piece that appeared in UC Santa Barbara’s lit magazine Spectrum. I titled it “In the Closet” because it was about how I liked to literally hang out in my closet to hide from the world… (I know, I know.)
In the past year, I’ve returned to my memoir roots through live storytelling. Last October (‘24), I shared a ten-minute story at The Narrators in Denver about my exit from science. Some of you took me up on my offer to share the transcript of that story, and the offer still stands—just message me if you want to read it! Also, last August I won a Moth StorySLAM championship for my performance of a five-minute story about learning I was autistic and beginning to live my truth:
I’m going on to compete in the Moth GrandSLAM championship, which is scheduled for October 24, 2025 in Denver (get tickets here)!
SPEAKING
I do a fair bit of speaking/guest lecturing for college courses, writing clubs, fiction conventions/conferences, and workshops. I especially love doing smaller-setting events where I can meaningfully connect with attendees. If you’re interested in having me speak at your school, your book club, or some other event, just ask!
On my website, you can find examples of the topics I speak on and some of my past events, such as the National Renewable Energy Lab’s “Visioning Energy” workshop and Caltech’s “Design Your Life” course.
SCIENCE
For most of my adult life, I’ve been stuck in a love triangle with science and writing. Of course, you all know that writing won out in the end—although, since my genre is sci-fi, maybe you could say we’re in a throuple now? Silly metaphors aside, my science background has strongly shaped who I am as a fiction writer and as a person.
I earned my Ph.D. in biochemistry & molecular biophysics from Caltech in 2023, my M.S. in biochemistry & biophysics from Oregon State University in 2016, and my B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2011.
Here’s a quote about my PhD research from an interview I did for Caltech Magazine when I graduated:
“I like to say that I'm a cellular linguist because I study the Notch signaling pathway, which is a language that cells use to communicate. I'm studying the syntax and the grammar of its molecular usage, like which molecules are used as signals in which contexts and why they're used instead of a different one. In that way, my research intersects with my love for writing and my love for words. My favorite thing is exploring what language can do, how language is designed, and how it can be harnessed to make change—cellularly, intellectually, and societally.
“Writing is everything for me. I like to write fiction that’s accessible to people who haven’t done a PhD in molecular biology, but I want all the speculative elements to be realistic and grounded in science as much as possible. I really enjoy stories where a trained scientist can suspend their disbelief and think, ‘Maybe this could really happen.’”
You can learn more about my PhD research in my January post about my recently-published paper.
I have two other first-author papers from my Masters research at Oregon State:
Kuintzle, R. C., Chow, E. S., Westby, T. N., Gvakharia, B. O., Giebultowicz, J. M., & Hendrix, D. A. (2017). Circadian deep sequencing reveals stress-response genes that adopt robust rhythmic expression during aging. Nature communications, 8(1), 14529.
Hill, S. T.*, Kuintzle, R.*, Teegarden, A., Merrill III, E., Danaee, P., & Hendrix, D. A. (2018). A deep recurrent neural network discovers complex biological rules to decipher RNA protein-coding potential. Nucleic acids research, 46(16), 8105-8113.
* Co-first-authors
If you’re interested in hearing about why I left science after finishing my PhD, ask me for the transcript of my storytelling performance at The Narrators in Denver last October. My story shares many common threads with those of other former academics and it may resonate if you’ve spent any time in the world of scientific research.
People often ask me if I regret spending so much time earning degrees I won’t be using. The reality is that I use my degrees all the time. For example, some of the alien languages you’ll encounter in The Ghosts of Gadolin series are directly inspired by cellular signaling mechanics. Every piece of fiction I’ve written draws in some way on the scientific concepts I’ve studied or uncovered through my research.
Of course, I also use my science background to teach, which brings me to…
TEACHING
I have an eclectic teaching background. I’ve co-created and led multiple middle school science summer camps at Oregon State University. I’ve given lectures and led lab experiments as a teaching assistant at OSU and Caltech. I taught high school biology and physical sciences with an emergency teaching credential after a new science teacher near my hometown was fired.
Currently, I’m a lecturer in the University of Colorado, Boulder Arts & Sciences Honors Program, where I teach an advanced writing course for honors students working on their theses. Occasionally, I also substitute teach at high schools in the Denver area, covering science, math, and English classes for teachers who trust me to give lectures and help students with assignments. This recent post dives deeper into why I teach and what I love about it, but here’s the most important reason: I write young adult (YA) fiction, which is primarily about and for high school- and college-aged teens. Connecting with this age group in meaningful ways helps me write authentically from teenage points of view.
ORGANIZING AND ACTIVISM
I was radicalized by the fall of Roe vs. Wade in 2022, while still in grad school at Caltech. I started organizing and taking action with fellow students to make the change I wanted to see in the world—and was astonished at what we accomplished together. There was no going back after that. I had tasted the power of the collective.
If you’re interested in the details of my student organizing history, here are a few resources:
Selected articles about the National Day of Student Action for Reproductive Justice (Oct 6, 2022) and my role in organizing it: Jacobin, The Nation, Inside Higher Ed, Teen Vogue.
My post about the 2024 student encampments for divestment from Israel and my Q&A about student organizing with the students of Caltech’s “Design Your Life” course.
My interview with ABC News about grad student labor organizing around issues like low wages.
My joint interview on Youth Organizing at the Day Without Us National Teach-In (2022) starts at 2:15:45 in the below video:
After graduating from Caltech, moving to Denver, and transitioning to fiction writing in 2023, I no longer had a workplace to organize within. Here are a few of the things I’ve gotten involved with in Denver:
I joined the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC). As co-chair of the local EWOC chapter within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Labor Committee, I support the organizing efforts of Denverites who are trying to start formal or informal unions in their workplaces.
I am a volunteer with the Colorado Rapid Response Network (CORRN), which mobilizes community members to respond to local Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity.
I got some hands-on experience in tenant organizing with the Denver Metro Tenants Union. I also organized my apartment building simply by befriending my neighbors and coordinating pushback on our landlord’s unreasonable rent and fee increases.
I’ve done some volunteer electoral work: phone-banking and knocking doors to turn out the vote for city-level ballot measures and legislators.
Since moving to a new Denver neighborhood last summer, I’ve been building community by meeting neighbors, sharing food and baked goods, and hosting frequent group meals, music nights, and group volunteer outings.
Experiencing the power of collective action has greatly impacted the kinds of stories I tell about what positive futures are possible and how we get there. Read more about this in my 2025 essay, “How to write hopeful sci-fi futurism when everything sucks: Sourcing knowledge and optimism from revolutionary history and community action.”
If you want to learn how to get involved in the labor or tenants movements, shoot me a message and I’ll help you get plugged in, wherever you are.
FUN FACTS AND EMBARRASSING ANECDOTES
When I have falling dreams, I fall from incredible heights and I always hit the ground. It hurts.
I play piano and sing. Of a random weekend evening, you might find me and a few neighbors belting out 80s power ballads or Disney songs together in the living room.
I can tolerate (and I enjoy) inhuman levels of spiciness in food. It’s possible I have some kind of mutation.
I am a baking fiend. Ask me for my sourdough bread, apple pie, cinnamon roll, zucchini bread, and soft pretzel recipes! Side note: My cooking repertoire was limited to spaghetti and nachos until my third year of college. When I learned to make aspirin in organic chemistry lab, I realized that following a recipe was essentially the same as following a chemical synthesis protocol.
I dabble in painting, but it stresses me out because I never know when it’s good enough to stop.
I dabble in crochet.
A jellyfish I crocheted while watching bad reality TV with a friend in 2024. Its head is stuffed with dryer lint because that’s what I had on hand.
Lastly, a few silly excerpts from my high school diary…
Trying to figure out if someone liked me:
[Name redacted = X] wanted me to wiggle my nose again. But I didn’t oblige. On the way back, X and I walked next to each other almost the whole way. I tripped (but didn’t fall) twice and X laughed with me but didn’t talk less or treat me differently. Wow. Then I plucked a dandelion and he kept trying to steal my wish.
X teases me so much; isn’t that a sign guys like you? Then he apologizes so much.
A bizarre gastronomic experiment:
I ate a dog treat today. First I tried a beef flavored bone cracker thing and then a bacon one but I liked bacon best, although they both tasted like stale crackers and particle board.
(I offered no context about why I did this.)
Flirting is hard work:
I saw [name redacted = Y]’s dad at church. He said Y had a big smile on his face after the bbq yesterday… He’d better. I flirted hard.
An inside joke with myself:
I’m going to keep my toaster forever. It’s for a joke between the toaster and I, and I fear that if exposed to the open air, the joke would cease to be and so I refrain from writing it. But you remember, Rachael, don’t you?
No. No, I do not.
It’s entries like these that make me wonder how it took so long for me to realize I was autistic:
I make him laugh at almost everything I say and he loves my facial expressions. He’s always imitating me and giving me that “you are so cute I adore you” face. Or that “your personality is so mysteriously unique” like “pleasantly confused” face I guess.
I’ll stop there for now. Thanks for reading, and for all your support. :)
Love,
Rachael