Bio

Rebecca Donner is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, published by Little, Brown. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the 2022 PEN /Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the 2022 Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Plutarch Award. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days was selected as a New York Times Critics’ Top Book, a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was also named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and The Economist. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days was serialized by BBC Radio 4.

Rebecca Donner is a 2026-27 Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She was a 2023-24 fellowship at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a Visiting Scholar at Oxford in 2023. In 2022, she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

The Royal Historical Society in London elected Rebecca Donner a Fellow in recognition of her contribution to international historical scholarship. Other recent international honors include a 2026 fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy and a 2026 fellowship at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France.

She was a 2018-19 Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross Foundation. Donner is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and has taught at Wesleyan University, Columbia University, and Barnard College.

Born in Canada, Donner was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. She is the author of Sunset Terrace, a critically acclaimed novel, and Burnout, a graphic novel about ecoterrorism. Her essays, reportage, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, The Nation, and Bookforum.

She can be found on Instagram.