Background

Nina MacLaughlin was born in the United States and grew up in Massachusetts.

Education

Nina MacLaughlin received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

After graduating from university, Nina MacLaughlin worked for about eight years at the Boston Phoenix, the award-winning alternative newsweekly. She wrote about movies and books and food. She interviewed the authors she admired. At the age of thirty, in 2008, she quit and became a carpenter at Craigslist continuing to pursue writing. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, The Rumpus, The Paris Review Daily, American Short Fiction, the Wall Street Journal, Meatpaper, The Daily Beast, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, and The Millions among other places, and she has been a guest on All Things Considered.

MacLaughlin wrote in 2015 her first book Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter - a book for anyone who has ever dreamed of changing tracks. It is her inspiring and entertaining story of quitting a journalism desk job to become a carpenter. In this book she tells the story of becoming carpenter - the joys and frustrations of making things by hand; the challenges she faced as a woman doing a male-job - and how manual labor changed the way she sees the world. She continues to build and write and now is a book columnist for the Boston Globe. MacLaughlin also writes a blog called Carpentrix.

Her most recent book is Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung (2019). In this book, her first story collection, Nina MacLaughlin reexamines the myths of Ovid's epic poem The Metamorphoses through a lens superheated with feminist rage. MacLaughlin reclaims the voice of almost every female character in the nearly 1,200 lines of the original work. Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt-rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men.

Achievements

• Nina MacLaughlin is recognized for her book Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter for which she instantly received a very positive response. She was recognized in Refinery29's list of "21 New Authors You Need to Know."

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter

    (A warm and inspiring book for anyone who has ever dreamed...)

    2015
  • Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

    (Seductresses and she-monsters, nymphs and demi-goddesses,...)

    2019

Views

Quotations: "When I think of the classics that live in the treasure box of my mind, I don't like the thought of having to encounter those works with my critic eyes."

"I am no expert on decision-making. I balk and second-guess, and my brain is very good at making detailed maps of worst-case scenarios."

"I’m as seduced as anyone by the Internet, I have a hard time pulling myself away from it, but when I do, my brain is better and, I’m a happier, calmer person."

"Writing for free looked like work. It felt like work. But it was the illusion of work, a funhouse mirror reflection."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Her voice is powerful, provocative, and, at this moment in history, undeniably necessary." - Bret Anthony Johnston