Carmen Maria Machado Explained
Carmen Maria Machado (born July 3, 1986) is an American short story author, essayist, and critic best known for Her Body and Other Parties, a 2017 short story collection, and her memoir In the Dream House, which was published in 2019 and won the 2021 Folio Prize.[2] Machado is frequently published in The New Yorker, Granta, Lightspeed, and other publications. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award[3] and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. Her stories have been reprinted in Year's Best Weird Fiction,[4] Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, The New Voices of Fantasy, and Best Women's Erotica.
Early life
Carmen Maria Machado was born July 3, 1986, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.[5] Machado's paternal grandfather left Santa Clara, Cuba, for the United States when he was 18, gaining U.S. citizenship after serving in the Korean War. He then moved to D.C. and worked at the United States Patent Office, where he met Machado's grandmother, who came over to the U.S. from Austria after World War II.[5]
Machado grew up in a very religious United Methodist household; this upbringing, she says, led to a sense of guilt about her queer sexuality for several years.[6]
Education
She attended Parkland High School in South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania,[7] and then American University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 2008.[8]
She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and received fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the University of Iowa, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.[9] Machado also attended the Clarion Workshop, where she studied under author Ted Chiang and others.[10]
Career
Machado worked in the Iowa Writers' Workshop for two years after receiving her MFA there. After a rejection from Starbucks in 2013, she took up work at Lush, a soap store, while she taught writing as an adjunct professor at Rosemont College and other schools in the area. She also did freelance writing while she lived in Pennsylvania.
Machado's short stories, essays, and criticism have been published in a number of magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, Tin House, Lightspeed, Guernica, AGNI, National Public Radio, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons,[11] and other publications. Her stories have also been reprinted in anthologies such as Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Best Horror of the Year, and Best Women's Erotica. Machado's short story "Horror Story," originally published in Granta in 2015, details a lesbian couple's difficulty coping with a haunting in their new house.[12] [13]
Machado's fiction has been called "strange and seductive", and it has been said that her "work doesn't just have form, it takes form."[14] Her fiction has been a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette,[15] the Shirley Jackson Award,[16] the Franz Kafka Award in Magic Realism, the storySouth Million Writers Award, and the Calvino Prize from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisville. An analysis by io9 indicated that if not for the Sad Puppies ballot manipulation campaign, Machado would have been a finalist for the 2015 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.[17] In 2018, she won the Bard Fiction Prize.[18]
Her horror-inspired short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was published by Graywolf Press in 2017.[19] It was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction,[3] won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award John Leonard Prize,[20] and was shortlisted for the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize.[21] The collection has been optioned by FX and a television show is in development by Gina Welch.[22]
As of 2018, she is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.[23] Machado is a 2019 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.[24] She was a Visiting associate professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Spring 2021.[25]
Machado was guest editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edition.[26] Her sci-fi short stories have appeared in volumes including Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Matthew David Goodwin, with an introduction by Frederick Luis Aldama.[27]
Her essay "Both Ways", about the 2009 film Jennifer's Body, is part of the anthology , published in October 2022.[28]
Personal life
Machado is bisexual.[29] Until 2022, she lived in Philadelphia with her then-wife Val Howlett. The two married in 2017 and maintained a non-monogamous relationship, living with their partner Marne Litfin in a throuple.[30] Howlett described the relationships in March 2022, saying: "It's just really nice to not build your whole life around one single person. Everything from... the division of labor to how we have conflict to sharing joyful things. I just really love our lives." Machado and Howlett separated later that year.[31]
Machado now lives in Brooklyn, New York City.[32]
Awards and honors
Machado was awarded the
Richard Yates Short Story Prize in 2011
[66] and was named Writer on the Rise by
Philadelphia in their Best of Philly awards list.
[67] Published Works
Memoir
Collections
Short stories
- “Difficult at Parties” (Unstuck, Issue 2, 2012)*
- "Inventory" (Strange Horizons, 2013)*
- "Vacation" (Wigleaf, 2013)
- "” (The American Reader, Volume 1, 2013)*
- "Miss Laura's School for Esquire Men" (Tin House, 2013)
- “We Were Never Alone in Space” (Shimmer, Issue 17, 2013)
- “The Hungry Earth” (Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, Rosarium Publishing, 2013)
- "Observations About Eggs from the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa" (Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 47, 2014)
- "Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead" (Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, John Joseph Adams, 2014)
- “We Were Never Men” (The Red Volume: An Anthology of Stories by the Awkward Robots, The Awkward Robots, 2014)
- "The Husband Stitch" (Granta, 2014)*
- "Mothers" (Interfictions, Issue 4, 2014)*
- "Descent" (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 29, 2015)
- “I Bury Myself” (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, No. 33, 2015)
- "Horror Story" (Granta, 2015)
- "The Old Women Who Were Skinned" (Fairy Tale Review, Issue 12, 2016)
- "My Body, Herself" (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 12, 2016)
- “The House at the End of the World” (Fantastic Stories of the Imagination People of Color, Positronic Publishing, 2017)
- "Blur" (Summer Reading, Issue 72, 2017)
- “Promise Me” (Great Jones Street Originals, 2017)
- "Eight Bites" (Gulf Coast, Issue 29.2, 2017)*
- “There and Back Again” (Mixed Up, Skyhorse, 2017)
- "Mary When You Follow Her" (VQR, 2018)
- "A Brief and Fearful Star" (Future Tense, 2018)
- "A Cat, a Bride, a Servant" (Garage, Issue 15, 2018)
- “The Resident” (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, Mariner Books, 2018)*
- “Haunt” (Conjunctions, 2019)
- “The Book of the Dead” (BBC Radio 4, 2019)
- "The Things Eric Eats Before He Eats Himself” (The Mythic Dream, Saga Press, 2019)
- "Relaxation Technique" (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 53, 2019)
- “The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror” (Granta, 2020)
- “Justice” (The Chronicles of Now, 2020)
- “A Hundred Miles and a Mile” (When Things Get Dark, Titan Books, 2021)
- “Bloody Summer” (Amazon Original Stories, 2022)
- "Endlings" (Conjunctions, 2024)
*Also appears in Her Body and Other Parties (2017)
Comics
- The Low, Low Woods #1-6 (DC Comics, 2019–2020)
- Bottomless (2019)
- Heaven on Earth (2020)
- The Fruiting Body (2020)
- Einstein on the Beach (2020)
- The Witch's Tale (2020)
- Bells to Rest, Lambs to Slaughter (2020)
Collected hardcover edition published 2020
Poetry
Essays
- "Luxury Shopping from the Other Side of the Register" (The New Yorker, 2013)
- "The Afterlife of Pia Farrenkopf" (The New Yorker, 2014)
- "O Adjunct! My Adjunct!" (The New Yorker, 2015)
- "A Girl's Guide to Sexual Purity" (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2015)
- "The Moon Over the River Lethe" (Catapult, 2016)
- "The Morals of the Stories" (Tiny Donkey, 2016)
- "How I Should Have Known Trump Would Be Elected President" (HTMLGiant, 2016)
- "The Trash Heap Has Spoken" (Guernica, 2017)
- "Gaslit Nation" (Medium, 2017)
- "Unruly, Adjective" (Medium, 2018)
- "The Anxiety That Binds" (The New York Times, 2018)
- "Household Object: Taxidermied Alligator Head" (The Believer, 2018)
- “A Dear and Nothing Else” (March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women, Library of America, 2019)
- “What Does Pride Mean Now?” (The New York Times, 2020)
- “An Inquiry” (Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond, HarperCollins, 2021)
- “Both Ways” (It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, Feminist Press, 2022)
As Editor
- PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 (Catapult, 2019)
- The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2019 (Mariner Books, 2019)
- BAX 2020: Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)
- Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games (Graywolf Press, 2023)
Notes and References
- Web site: Once rejected by Starbucks, writer-in-residence is a National Book Award finalist . Shepard . Louisa . November 2, 2017 . Penn Today . . November 12, 2019.
- Web site: 2021-03-25. Machado wins 2021 Folio Prize. live. 2021-03-25. Books+Publishing. en-AU. https://web.archive.org/web/20210324225334/https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2021/03/25/184103/machado-wins-2021-rathbones-folio-prize/ . 2021-03-24 .
- News: 2017 National Book Award finalists revealed. October 4, 2017. CBS News. 2017-10-04. en.
- Web site: Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2. Undertow Publications. en-US. 2020-01-23.
- "The metafictional, liminal, lyrical ways of writer Carmen Maria Machado" by Sabrina Vourvoulias, AL DÍA News, December 3, 2015.
- Web site: 2016-02-03. Interview with Carmen Maria Machado. 2021-04-25. Solstice Literary Magazine. Carissa Halston. en-US.
- https://inventaire.io/entity/wd:Q29559684 "Carmen Maria Machado"
- Web site: 2020-02-11. Author Carmen Maria Machado on Her Time in DC and the Great Advice She Gives Young Writers Washingtonian (DC). Nora. McGreevy. 2021-03-18. Washingtonian. en-US.
- Web site: Honors. Machado. Carmen Maria. 3 September 2023.
- "Her Body and Other Parties: An Interview with Carmen Maria Machado" by Amandine Faucheux, NDR Magazine, May 2015.
- http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/inventory/ Strange Horizons
- Web site: Horror Story. Granta. 30 October 2015 . en-AU. 2019-04-12.
- Book: Machado . Carmen Maria . Her Body and Other Parties . . 2017 . Minneapolis.
- Web site: Sofia Samatar. Sofia. Samatar . Double Take: On Carmen Maria Machado. The Los Angeles Review of Books. April 26, 2015.
- "2014 Nebula Awards Winners", Locus Magazine, June 6, 2015.
- "2017 Shirley Jackson Award Winners", Shirley Jackson Awards website, accessed April 23, 2017.
- Web site: This Is What The 2015 Hugo Ballot Should Have Been . Liptak. Andrew. io9. en. 23 August 2015. 4 September 2023.
- Web site: Annual Bard Fiction Prize Is Awarded To Carmen Maria Machado Bard College Public Relations. Relations. Bard Public. www.bard.edu. en. 2020-02-07.
- Web site: On Carmen Maria Machado's Body Horrors. The+Millions. 12 January 2018 . en-AU. 2019-04-12.
- Web site: 2017 NBCC Awards Finalists Announced . . Maher . John . January 22, 2018 . January 23, 2018.
- Web site: Dylan Thomas Prize 2018 shortlist announced. Books+Publishing. en-AU. 28 March 2018. 2019-02-04.
- Web site: Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body And Other Parties Adaptation Snatched Up by FX. Jezebel. 16 October 2018 . Feb 21, 2020.
- News: Carmen Maria Machado: Sitting Down with Penn's Writer–In–Residence. Lemieux. Elizabeth. March 2, 2018. 34th Street. Oct 31, 2018.
- Web site: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Carmen Maria Machado. en-US. 2020-02-07.
- Web site: Carmen Maria Machado Iowa Writers' Workshop College of Liberal Arts & Sciences The University of Iowa . 2022-05-08 . writersworkshop.uiowa.edu.
- Web site: Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. Studios. Clockpunk. John Joseph Adams. en-US. 2020-01-23. 2020-02-14. https://web.archive.org/web/20200214093754/http://www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/best-american-science-fiction-and-fantasy-2019/. dead.
- Book: Latinx rising : an anthology of Latinx science fiction and fantasy. Goodwin, Matthew David,, Aldama, Frederick Luis, 1969-. 2020 . 978-0-8142-7799-7. Columbus. 1157344767.
- Book: It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror . 4 October 2022 . The Feminist Press at CUNY . 9781952177798 . Vallese . Joe . New York.
- Web site: Machado . Carmen Maria . 2022-09-27 . Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer's Body . 2024-10-24 . Autostraddle . en-US.
- Web site: Carmen Maria Machado, Val Howlett and Marne Litfin Are Each Other's Editors . Goyanes . Rob . 17 March 2022 . Cultured.
- Web site: Things I'm Bad At: Residencies . Machado . Carmen Maria . 19 July 2022 . Cup of Stars . Substack.
- Web site: Biography. Machado. Carmen Maria. 3 September 2023.
- Web site: Carmen Maria Machado Author LibraryThing . 2024-06-05 . LibraryThing.com . en.
- Web site: Award Bibliography: Carmen Maria Machado . 2024-06-05 . www.isfdb.org.
- Web site: sfadb : Carmen Maria Machado Awards . 2024-06-05 . www.sfadb.com.
- Web site: Carmen Maria Machado . 2024-08-13 . The Nebula Awards . en-US.
- Web site: 2016-10-31 . Granta Reads: Carmen Maria Machado's 'The Husband Stitch' . 2024-08-13 . Granta . en-US.
- Web site: The Husband Stitch . 2024-08-13 . National Centre for Writing NCW . en-US.
- Web site: Schnelbach . Leah . 2017-10-04 . Her Body, Her Self: Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties . 2024-08-13 . Reactor . en-US.
- Web site: Petski . Denise . 2018-10-15 . FX Developing 'Her Body And Other Parties' Anthology Based On Book From Gina Welch & Imagine TV . 2024-08-13 . Deadline . en-US.
- Web site: The BKBF Interview: Carmen Maria Machado . 2024-08-13 . Brooklyn Book Festival . en-US.
- Web site: 13 November 2023 . Carmen Maria Machado: Core of Darkness . 29 January 2024 . locusmag.org . Locus Publications . interview 2023.
- Web site: Brooklyn Public Library Announces 2018 Literary Prize Winners . 2024-08-13 . Brooklyn Public Library . en.
- Web site: Murnane . Kevin . The 2018 Locus Awards Highlight The Broad Range Of Science Fiction And Fantasy [Sale Price Update] ]. 2024-08-13 . Forbes . en.
- Web site: The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction . 2024-08-13 . The Publishing Triangle . en-US.
- Web site: NAIBA Books of the Year Award . 2024-08-13 . New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.
- Web site: 2020-06-22 . 2019 Bisexual Book Awards Winners . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20211206202250/https://locusmag.com/2020/06/2019-bisexual-book-awards-winners/ . 2021-12-06 . 2024-05-24 . . en-US.
- Web site: Announcing the Goodreads Choice Winner in Best Memoir & Autobiography! . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20231104041350/https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-memoir-autobiography-books-2019 . 2023-11-04 . 2024-05-24 . Goodreads.
- Web site: 2020-01-28 . 2020 Over the Rainbow Book List features 70 titles for adult readers . 2024-05-24 . . en.
- Web site: 2020-03-15 . Over the Rainbow: 2020 . 2024-05-24 . Booklist.
- Web site: October 1, 2019 . 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals Longlist . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20191002191024/https://locusmag.com/2019/10/2020-andrew-carnegie-medals-longlist/ . October 2, 2019 . November 12, 2019 . Locus Online.
- Web site: Longlist Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence: Longlist 2020 . 2024-05-24 . . en.
- Web site: 2020 Nonfiction . 2024-06-04 . 2024 BOOKTUBE PRIZE . en.
- Web site: 2020-07-20 . 2020 Goldie Awards Winners . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240411013708/https://locusmag.com/2020/07/2020-goldie-awards-winners/ . 2024-04-11 . 2024-05-24 . . en-US.
- Web site: 2020-09-08 . Awards: Heartland Booksellers Finalists . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220118132731/https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3819 . 2022-01-18 . 2024-05-24 . Shelf Awareness.
- Web site: Aviles . Gwen . 2021-06-01 . Lambda Literary announces 25 winning books for annual Lammy Awards . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220320095220/https://www.nbcnews.com/select/nbc-out/best-lgbtq-books-lammy-awards-lambda-literary-ncna1215746 . 2022-03-20 . 2021-12-24 . . en.
- Web site: 2020-06-01 . 32nd Annual Lambda Awards Winners . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240418163417/https://locusmag.com/2020/06/32nd-annual-lambda-awards-winners/ . 2024-04-18 . 2024-05-24 . . en-US.
- Web site: 2020-05-04 . Awards: Triangle, Wolff Translator's Winners . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220921231546/https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3731 . 2022-09-21 . 2024-05-24 . Shelf Awareness.
- Web site: Reading Women . 2020-11-18 . Announcing Reading Women's 2020 Nonfiction Award Shortlist . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230607112831/https://lithub.com/announcing-reading-womens-2020-nonfiction-award-shortlist/ . 2023-06-07 . 2024-05-24 . . en-US.
- Web site: 2020-01-29 . 'How We Fight for Our Lives' and 'Cantoras' win 2020 Stonewall Adult Awards . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20231223043631/https://www.ala.org/news/2020/01/stonewall-book-awards-announced-literature-nonfiction . 2023-12-23 . 2024-05-24 . . en.
- Web site: 2020-12-09 . Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Jennifer Croft awarded the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing by Stanford Libraries Libraries . 2024-06-04 . library.stanford.edu . en.
- Web site: 2020-12-22 . Announcing the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards Longlists . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230628061701/https://pen.org/literary-awards/2021-pen-america-longlists/ . 2023-06-28 . 2024-05-24 . . en.
- Web site: 2020-12-23 . PEN America Literary Awards Longlist . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220804110432/https://locusmag.com/2020/12/pen-america-literary-awards-longlist/ . 2022-08-04 . 2024-05-24 . . en-US.
- News: Flood . Alison . March 24, 2021 . Carmen Maria Machado wins Rathbones Folio prize for queer abuse memoir . October 27, 2021 . The Guardian.
- Web site: 2021-03-26 . Awards: NBCC and Rathbones Folio Winners; Dylan Thomas and Stella Shortlists . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230130004823/https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3951 . 2023-01-30 . 2024-05-24 . Shelf Awareness.
- Web site: 2017-10-04 . Congratulations Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award finalist! . 2024-08-13 . Bull City Press . en-US.
- Web site: 2018-07-30 . Best of Philly 2018: Media, Politics, and People . 2024-08-13 . Philadelphia Magazine . en-US.