Discipline: Literature

Erin McGraw

Discipline: Literature
Region: Columbus, OH
MacDowell Fellowships: 1997
More: erinmcgraw.com
Erin McGraw is an American author, known primarily for works of fiction, both short stories and novels. Her generous, genial works often depict familial relations with cold-eyed optimism. Her first book, the story collection Bodies at Sea (1989), features a range of characters from a coal miner to college professor who engage in surprising actions. Her next story collection, Lies of the Saints (1996), which explores themes including marriage and parenthood through quirky stories about endearing misfits, was described by The New York Times as a "gratifyingly substantial" work featuring "savvy, sardonic women." The Good Life (2004), which features characters battling daily demons of envy, fear, and disillusionment while somehow maintaining an abiding optimism. Her novels include The Baby Tree (2002), The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (2008), which draws on her own family history to describe the price one woman pays for independence, and Better Food for a Better World (2013), the story of six idealistic college friends who band together to open the Natural High Ice Cream parlor only to find life intruding on their dreams, until … Her short work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, The Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review.

Studios

Phi Beta

Erin McGraw 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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