Career
McGrath"s most recent novel, "North East" (NeWest Press, 2014) is the second novel in the Santa Rosa (NeWest Press, 2011) trilogy set primarily in Edmonton, Alberta. Santa Rosa was nominated for the 2012 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. Recurring Fictions (University of Alberta Press, 2002), McGrath"s first novel, is an experimental work chronicling the history of a Canadian family.
The plot structure of this novel is non-linear, with shifts in narrative viewpoint and time.
The often poetic style of this novel is multi-layered with spaces in the text and on pages providing literal and figurative openings for the reader to enter the world of the narrator(s). Short fragments of the text are also repeated at the bottom of some of the pages.
Her first book of poetry, common place ecstasies (Beach Holme Publishing, 2000), explores themes of home, and childhood. A long poem, "Preserving," which is included in this collection was also published in chapbook form by Rubicon Press in February, 2011.
"Preserving" uses found portions of text extracted from a home canning pamphlet as a springboard for poetic narrative that tells the multi-generational story of prairie women.
As noted on the Rubicon Press website: "McGrath’s grandmother gave her that brochure and it was a palimpsest of sorts, with notes on the recipes and unexpected doodles penciled in. But, when she encountered these texts as an adult, their meaning became quite different."
McGrath has collaborated with printmaker Walter Jule, who also contributed cover art for common place ecstasies, on a poetry/print project entitled A Revision of Forward. These prints and poems have been exhibited together in Edmonton and the poems will be published by NeWest Press in fall 2015.
McGrath"s fiction and poetry has been broadcast on Canadian Broadcasting Company Radio and has appeared in numerous literary journals.
Her non-fiction has been published locally and nationally.
