Discipline: Literature

Elizabeth McCracken

Discipline: Literature
Region: Newton, MA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1993

Elizabeth McCracken holds the James Michener Chair of Fiction of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She and her husband were previously on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the sister of former PC World magazine editor-in-chief and founder of Technologizer.com Harry McCracken. Ann Patchett in an interview for Blackbird at Virginia Commonwealth University, mentions that Elizabeth McCracken is her editor and is the only person to read her manuscripts as she is writing. In 2014, she published her first collection of stories in 20 years: Thunderstruck & Other Stories, which won The Story Prize and was longlisted for The National Book Award. Among the nine stories is a tale about a successful documentary filmmaker who has to face a famous subject he manipulated and betrayed; one about a young scholar who is mourning his wife; and another about a grocery store manager who obsesses about a woman’s disappearance. Her 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.

Studios

Mixter

Elizabeth McCracken worked in the Mixter studio.

Built in 1927–1930, the Florence Kilpatrick Mixter Studio was funded by its namesake and designed by the architect F. Winsor, Jr., who also designed MacDowell's original Savidge Library in 1925. Mixter Studio, solidly built of yellow and grey-hued granite, once had sweeping views of Pack Monadnock to the east. The lush forest has now grown…

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