While on campus, the author will also visit an Ohio State Marion English class to chat with a group of students, many of whom are pursuing their English degree and a career in creative writing.

McGraw is author of four books of fiction, including the story-collections Lies of the Saints (A New York Times Notable Book for 1996), The Baby Tree, and The Good Life.

Her new novel, The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, will be published in August 2008 by Houghton-Mifflin. Based on the author's grandmother's life story, The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, tells of a young woman who flees west in hopes of a second chance at life, only to find it complicated by the family she thought she left behind.

Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, STORY, and elsewhere.

McGraw’s work has also been honored with the Pushcart Prize and fellowships at the McDowell and Yaddo writers’ colonies. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has taught at DePauw University and the University of Cincinnati, where she received the Boyce Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Born and raised in Redondo Beach, California, McGraw received her Master of Fine Arts at Indiana University and has lived in the Midwest ever since. Along with her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins, she teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University and divides her time between Ohio and Tennessee.