Elizabeth McCracken is the Michener Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Texas’s Department of English and the Michener Center for Writers. She is the author of a 1993 collection of stories, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, a debut the New York Times called “elegantly written.” Her first novel, The Giant’s House was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award, and Granta magazine named McCracken one of the “Twenty Best Young American Novelists” that year. A third novel followed in 2001, Niagara Falls All Over Again, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the year and was recognized with a PEN/Winship award.

McCracken memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination tells of the death of her first child during her ninth month of pregnancy, in 2006. Her unflinching account of this terrible loss—and the healthy birth of another baby a year later—has won both popular and critical acclaim for its eloquence and fearless honesty. It was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2008.