Photo credit: Nina Subin

​Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them (Penguin Press, 2020), and What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017). Her essays, poetry, and criticism appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Paris Review Daily, Slate, Lana Turner Journal, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, and other publications.

Born in New Jersey and raised in Vermont, Raphel holds a PhD in English from Harvard University, an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and an AB (summa cum laude) from Princeton University. She is currently a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program.

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The author, c. 1997