Elizabeth McCracken

Background

Elizabeth McCracken was born on September 16, 1966 in Brighton, Massachusetts, United States, into the family of Samuel and Natalie (Jacobson) McCracken.

Education

McCracken graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts. She has a Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude, with distinction) from Boston University, and a Master of Arts in English literature from that same institution. In 1990 she graduated from the University of Iowa with a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing. Elizabeth earned a Master of Science in library and information science at Drexel University in 1993.

Career

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of six books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and the forthcoming Bowlaway. Elizabeth McCracken’s first published book was a collection of nine short stories titled Here’s Your Hat What's Your Hurry, that was praised by reviewers both for its eccentric characters and its elegant writing style.

In 1996 McCracken followed Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry with her first novel, The Giant’s House. Written in a low-key style and lightened with touches of humor, The Giant's House is a modern fairy tale featuring Peggy Cort, an old-maid librarian living in a Cape Cod town in the 1950s. Elizabeth ’s received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

She has taught creative writing at Western Michigan University, the University of Oregon, the University of Houston, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, Austin. McCracken currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is an artist-in-residence at Skidmore College.

Achievements

• Elizabeth McCracken's short story, "Hungry", was longlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. On March 4, 2015, McCracken was named the winner of The Story Prize for Thunderstruck & Other Stories and received the top prize of $20,000.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry

    (The singular, enchanting debut story collection from Eliz...)

    2019
  • Niagara Falls All Over Again

    (By turns graceful and knowing, funny and moving, Niagara ...)

    2002
  • An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir

    (A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracke...)

    2008
  • The Giant's House 1997
  • Thunderstruck & Other Stories 2015
  • The Giant's House 2013

Views

Although McCracken tends to romanticize the old-fashioned, the vintage, the antique, she has no illusions that the past was simpler or better than the present. In researching her ancestry, much of her focus has been on how women have been erased from the records of history.

Quotations: “I like to hold the chunk of remaining book as I read; I like to feel it diminish.”

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Stellar…McCracken writes with a natural lyricism that sports vivid imagery and delightful turns of phrase.” Publishers Weekly, starred review
  
  “McCracken is a beloved bard of the eccentric, the misbegotten, and the unfathomable. . . . . [A] compassionate and rambunctious saga about love, grief, prejudice, and the courage to be one’s self.” Booklist, starred review

Interests

• bowling

• Writers

  Raymond Chandler, Grace Paley, Allan Gurganus, Edward P. Jones, Lord Timothy Dexter, Julia Child, Kelly Link

• Artists

  Fernando Botero, Henry Moore

Connections

Elizabeth McCracken is married to the novelist Edward Carey, with whom she has two children - August George Carey Harvey and Matilda Libby Mary Harvey. An earlier child died before birth.

Father:

Samuel McCracken

Mother:

Natalie (Jacobson) McCracken

Spouse:

Edward Carey

Son:

August George Carey Harvey

Daughter:

Matilda Libby Mary Harvey

Brother:

Harry McCracken