In a future where rain is a luxury enjoyed exclusively by the ultra-rich, the world's only umbrella-maker is framed for the high-profile murder of the quadrillionaire patriarch who controls the earth's last natural resources. Beautiful and horrific, The Rain Artist is pitched as Succession meets The Fifth Element and asks the question of how art and artists can thrive under commercialized capitalism.
The Rain Artist started as a short story published in O: The Oprah Magazine and was included as a notable story in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 anthology by editors Rebecca Roanhorse and John Joseph Adams. The novel is the first in a series set in the immediate future of our mutating planet.
About the author: Claire Rudy Foster's debut short story collection, Shine of the Ever, was named as one of the best LGBTQ books of the year by O: The Oprah Magazine and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIE Awards. The book was selected for the ALA 2021 Over the Rainbow Fiction and Poetry Longlist.
Foster's essays and fiction have appeared in many places, including The New York Times, Black Static, Lit Hub, The Guardian, Mic, McSweeney's, and Catapult. Their writing has been recognized with four Pushcart Prize nominations. Foster is the co-writer of the bestselling nonfiction book Unsettled: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis, which was named the "best bankruptcy book in the world" and one of Ralph Nader's top picks of the year.
"The Rain Artist is an evocative feast of all-too relevant eco and dystopian horror backdropped by smart, compelling storytelling that echoes the literary odyssey's of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Remarkable characters, disturbing, and perpetually beautiful. Celine Broussard is about to become everybody's new favorite heroine. C. R. Foster's brilliant, award-winning writing shines brightest in this apocalyptic, page-turning novel." -Kayli Scholz, author of Saint Grit
"A deluge of talent & surrealism engulfs the senses in The Rain Artist. Part Le Guin, part Mary Shelley, it is a moving picture guiding you through its lavish rooms." -Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins, poet and publisher, Resurrection Press
"Smart, haunting, and exceptional ... The characters in Claire Rudy Foster's fiction are all achingly lonely and the victims of human error, yes-but they're also miracles of endurance whose devastations, large and small, illuminate the better parts of ourselves." -Benjamin Percy, author of The Dark Net, The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding
"... an otherworldly, Atwood-esque dystopia." -Michelle Hart, Books Editor, O: The Oprah Magazine