Discipline: Literature – fiction

Alison McGhee

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: Minneapolis, MN
MacDowell Fellowships: 2000
More: alisonmcghee.com
Alison McGhee is an American author, who has published several picture books, books for children, and adult novels. She is a New York Times bestselling author, the winner of numerous awards. Alison McGhee's first novel, Rainlight, follows the characters left behind after the sudden and accidental death of Starr Williams. It received positive reviews and won both the Great Lakes College Association National Fiction Award and the Minnesota Book Award in 1999. McGhee's sophomore effort, Shadow Baby, is witnessed through the eyes of a young girl who befriends an old man as part of a school project. It was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. McGhee continued her adult themes with Was It Beautiful? She then began writing children's books. Countdown to Kindergarten and Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth, both share the same main character who begins the first story as she enters kindergarten and is in first grade by the second book. Turning her hand to young adult novels, McGhee introduced Snap and All Rivers Flow to the Sea. In Only a Witch Can Fly McGhee focuses on poetry. In this story-poem, created in sestina form, a little girl dreams about flying on her broom. In addition to being an award-winning author, McGhee is a professor of creative writing at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Studios

Phi Beta

Alison McGhee worked in the Phi Beta studio.

Funded by the Phi Beta Fraternity, a national professional fraternity of music and speech founded in 1912, Phi Beta Studio was built between 1929–1931 of granite quarried on the MacDowell grounds. The small studio is a simple in design, but displays a pleasing combination of materials with its granite walls and colorful slate roofing. Inside is…

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