Rebecca McKanna was born and raised in Iowa. Her debut novel, Don’t Forget the Girl, was nominated for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Mystery and the 2023 Strand Magazine’s Critics Award for Best Debut Mystery. It was awarded the 2024 Indiana Authors Award for Genre Fiction.

Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 and recognized as distinguished in The Best American Short Stories 2019. She has been published in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Third Coast, Joyland, and as one of Narrative's Stories of the Week, among other publications. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Indianapolis. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and a mini-schnauzer named Hans Gruber.