Rebecca McClanahan

Rebecca McClanahan's newest book, In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2020. She is the author of ten previous books, including The Tribal Knot: A Memoir of Family, Community, and a Century of Change and a revised edition of Word Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively, which has sold nearly 50,000 copies and is used as a text in many writing programs. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, The Sun, and in anthologies published by Doubleday, Norton, Putnam, Penguin, Beacon, St. Martin's, and numerous other publishers.
Recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Wood Prize from Poetry, and the Glasgow Award in Nonfiction for The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, she has also received the N.C. Governor's Award for Excellence in Education, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and four literary fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, among other honors and awards.
She teaches in the MFA programs of Queens University (Charlotte) and Rainier Writing Workshop (Pacific Lutheran University) and at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and gives readings, talks, and workshops throughout the country.