Directory

Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, was an AWP Award Winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars, Editor’s Pick by Oxford American, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Her nonfiction work has been a recipient of the Annie Dillard Award for Essay, the New Southerner Award, the Orison Anthology Award for Creative Nonfiction and, most recently, the LitSouth Award. She has co-edited, with poet Adrian Blevins, an essay collection called Walk till the Dogs Get Mean. Wanting Radiance, her newest novel, came out in May 2020 from University Press of Kentucky and Voice Lessons, a short collection of lyric essays, was released in June 2021 from Iris Press. Another essay collection, I Could Name God in Twelve Ways, is forthcoming in September 2024.

At MassArt, Karen Salyer McElmurray teaches Thinking Making Writing.