Literary Birthday – 16 September – Elizabeth McCracken

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth McCracken, born on 16 September 1966.

Elizabeth McCracken Quotes

1. Books remember all the things you cannot contain.
2. Library books were, I suddenly realised, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.
3. I believe marriage is a spectator sport.
4. I had never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love – plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing – turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn’t want, couldn’t use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness.
5. Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.
6. The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

Elizabeth McCracken is an award-winning American writer. She is the author of nine books including The Giant’s House: A Romance, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir, The Souvenir Museum: Stories, and A Long Game: How to Write Fiction. She’s received grants and fellowships from, among others, United States Artists, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her stories have won three Pushcart Prizes, two National Magazine Awards, and have appeared in five editions of The Best American Short Stories. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, PEN New England Award, and the Story Prize. Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram.

Photograph: Author’s website

by Amanda Patterson
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