Rachel Holmes Ingalls is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-born author who has lived in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, since 1965. She won the 1970 Authors' Club First Novel Award for Theft. Her novel Mrs. Caliban

Mrs. Caliban

Mrs. Caliban is a 1982 novel by Rachel Ingalls. The plot concerns a lonely housewife who finds companionship with a character who may or may not be a figment of her imagination, an amphibious biped named Larry....

was published in 1982, and her book of short stories Times Like These in 2005.

Ingalls's short story "Last Act: The Madhouse" inspired the story of the character Jean in the 1997 film Chinese Box

Chinese Box

Chinese Box is a 1997 movie directed by Wayne Wang and starring Jeremy Irons, Gong Li, Maggie Cheung and Michael Hui.The movie is set and was made at the time of Hong Kong's handover to the People's Republic of China on June 30, 1997...

by Wayne Wang

Wayne Wang

Wayne Wang is a Chinese American film director.-Biography:Wang was born and raised in Hong Kong, and named after his father's favorite movie star, John Wayne...

.

Personal life

Ingalls was born on May 13, 1940 in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

. She got her B. A. degree from Radcliffe College

Radcliffe College

Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...

 in 1964, and emigrated to England. She is the daughter of the late Sanskritist Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Sr., and the sister of the computer scientist Dan Ingalls.