Martha McPhee

Martha McPhee received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to complete her first novel, Bright Angel Time, which was published in 1997[3] and was a New York Times Notable Book. Her second novel, Gorgeous Lies, a follow-up to Bright Angel Time,[4] was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002.

In 2003, McPhee won a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction.[5] Her third novel, L'America, was published in 2006. Her fourth novel, Dear Money, set during the recent financial crisis, was published in 2010, and her fifth novel, An Elegant Woman, was published in 2020. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including The New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar.

McPhee is the daughter of literary journalist John McPhee and his first wife, photographer Pryde Brown. She has three sisters also born to her parents: fellow novelist Jenny, photographer Laura, and architectural historian Sarah.[6]

After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, McPhee lived with her mother, stepfather Dan Sullivan, three sisters, and four stepsisters on a farm outside of Princeton, New Jersey. Her mother and stepfather also had a daughter together, her half-sister Joan Sullivan.[7]

McPhee graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1987. Several years later, she went to graduate school and received her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1997.[2] She lives in New York City, and teaches at Hofstra University. She has two children, Livia and Jasper Svenvold McPhee.

• Bright Angel Time (1997)
• Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits (2000) (coauthored with her sister)
• Gorgeous Lies (2002)
• L'America (2006)
• Dear Money (2010)
• An Elegant Woman (2020)
• Omega Farm (2023)[8]

• Hofstra faculty profile for McPhee
• Author website