ShelfLife@Texas

Named Best Young American Novelist by Granta, Elizabeth McCracken traveled to London this July for an event promoting the British literary quarterly’s latest issue. Granta hosts a week of events featuring its writers and editors as they discuss the issue’s content and central ideas. This issue’s theme is “Going Back” which includes McCracken’s short story “Property.”  She appeared at several of the week’s events, including a conversation at the British Library with Salman Rushdie, Richard Russo, A.L. Kennedy, and Granta editor John Freeman.

McCracken, a professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, holds the James A. Michener Chair in Creative Writing. She is the author of a story collection, “Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry;” two novels, “The Giant’s House,” a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award, and “Niagara Falls All Over Again;” and a memoir, “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.”