MADGE MCKEITHEN

“McKeithen becomes what every writer longs for — the dreamed of ‘dear reader’ that literature lives for.” — Patricia Hampl

Madge McKeithen worked as a writer, editor, and researcher in a Congressional office on Capitol Hill, at the World Bank, at Princeton University, and at the Educational Testing Service, before permanently shifting to a career in education. She taught a variety of subjects to a variety of ages in public and private schools in New Jersey and Georgia.

In 2001, the search for a diagnosis for her older son’s progressive degenerative illness led McKeithen to take a leave from full-time high school teaching and subsequently to begin writing seriously. She studied and wrote in the Queens low-residency MFA program in Charlotte, North Carolina from 2003 to 2006, had her first book published in 2006, and that fall began teaching nonfiction writing at The New School in New York where she continues to teach creative nonfiction, with a particular emphasis on personal and lyric essays.

AUTHOR WEBSITE: MADGE MCKEITHEN