User:Nramsey14/sandbox

Early Life and Education
Carmen Maria Machado was raised by her parents in Allentown, an hour north of Philadelphia. Her father was the son of two immigrants, with his own father moving to the United States from Cuba at the age of 18.[3] Machado's grandfather worked in the US Patent Office and met his future wife when she immigrated to the U.S. from Austria after World War II.[3]. She was a girl scout until high school. While both of her parents were Methodist, in high school Carmen Maria Machado spent most of her time with a group of Evangelicals and adopted a self imposed abstinence pledge. In her freshmen year of high school, Machado was abused by a boy who forcibly made her touch him. After the incident, Machado bought a guide to remaining sexually pure, And the Bride wore White.

She started writing at a very early age and cites Roald Dahl's The Witches as being formative as well as Lois Duncan, Christopher Pike and R L Stein for its dark horror elements. She has also thanked Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi, and Yōko Ogawa for their work to open up literary spaces to certain genres. in particular, Machado was influenced by a "insightful and amazing English teacher" who introduced her to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was given to her to read in the 10th grade of high school[5]  as well as Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, The Awakening, some Henry James. Queer stories of inspiration for Machado are Weetzie Bat, Rubyfruit Jungle, The Price of Salt, Annie on My Mind.

Machado earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has received fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the University of Iowa, the Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.[2] Machado also attended the Clarion Workshop where she studied under authors such as Ted Chiang.[4]

Career
Carmen Maria Machado worked retail at Lush store in Philadelphia following graduate school before being admitted to writers residencies.

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 Magazine, Guernica, AGNI, National Public Radio, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, 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, Best Horror of the Year, and Best Women's Erotica.

Machado's fiction has been called "strange and seductive" while also noting that her "work doesn't just have form, it takes form."[8] Her fiction has been a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette,[9] the Shirley Jackson Award,[10] 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; as well, 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.[11]

Her story collection Her Body and Other Parties was published by Graywolf Press in 2017. It was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction,[1] won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award John Leonard Prize,[13] and was shortlisted for the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize.[14]

As of 2018, she is the Artist in Residence and teaches horror writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2018, Machado contributed "Relaxation Technique" to McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in which a story of 150 words was printed on a balloon. She was triggered by a balloon to write about a childhood memory.

She is also known for her writing in "fatshion" or fashion for fat women, and has said that she is afraid about writing about women of color even as a woman of color because of her own perception of being "more or less 'white-passing'". She is currently working on a memoir inspired to write about same sex relationship abuse due to it being hard to find outside of the context of "lesbian battering".

She has said that she does not write for straight people or men, but instead she writes for women and queer people when responding to questions surrounding how she deals with sex and especially queer sex in her work.

Her Body and Other Parties
The collection was rejected 30 times before being published by the independent press Graywolf. The book is in its seventh printing and has won multiple awards including the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Machado describes the book as "surreal, liminal horror about being a woman or a queer person in the world."

The Paris Review commented that “it’s rare to encounter an articulation of feminist themes that isn’t self-conscious of them.” Much of the book deals with themes of abuse against women's bodies. Each of the eight chapters takes on different forms as Machado uses elements of horror and fantasy to explore the reality that women face.

The story "The Husband Stitch" was inspired by Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Machado's experiences as a girl scout reading the story aloud around a campfire. Machado credits these stories with the aesthetic sensibility that she has carried into adulthood.

The story "Inventory" took inspiration from Machado's perspective that "it would be interesting if I wrote a story made up of sex scenes."

The story "Especially Heinous" retells 12 seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit while using surreal elements to tell a story of haunting. Machado says this story came to her after being sick for two days in an almost "high" state

The book has been picked up by FX with Gina Welch(writer for Feud and The Terror).

Personal Life
Carmen Maria Machado came out as bisexual in college and is currently married to her wife who is a YA novelist writer. She has described her wife as being very interested in tarot cards and crystals. They currently reside in Philadelphia.

Machado has described herself as a "radicalize[d]" feminist.

Books

 * Her Body and Other Parties: Stories (short story collection, Graywolf Press, 2017)
 * In the Dream House: A Memoir (Graywolf Press, 2019)

Short Stories

 * "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" Harper's Bazaar
 * "Inventory" Strange Horizons (January 2013)
 * "Vacation" Wigleaf (April 2013)
 * "Especially Heinous" The American Reader (May 2013)
 * "Miss Laura's School for Esquire Men" Tin House (July 2013)
 * "Observations About Eggs from the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa" Lightspeed Magazine (April 2014)
 * "Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead" Lightspeed Magazine(July 2014)
 * "The Husband Stitch" Granta(October 2014)
 * "Mothers" Interfictions (November 2014)
 * "Descent" Nightmare Magazine (February 2015)
 * "Horror Story" Granta(October 2015)
 * "My Body, Herself" Uncanny Magazine (2016)
 * "Blur" Tin House(Summer 2017)
 * "Eight Bites" Gulf Coast (Summer/Fall 2017)
 * "Relaxation Technique" McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (2018)
 * "The Old Women Who Were Skinned" Fairy Tale Review (April 2018)
 * "A Brief and Fearful Star" Slate/Future Tense (June 2018)
 * "Mary When You Follow Her" VQR (June 2018)


 * "A Cat, a Bride, a Servant" Garage (September 2018)

Essays

 * "Unruly, Adjective" Medium
 * "The Trash Heap Has Spoken" Guernica
 * "O Adjunct! My Adjunct!" The New Yorker
 * "The Moon Over the River Lethe" Catapult
 * "The Morals of the Stories" Tiny Donkey
 * "A Girl's Guide to Sexual Purity" Los Angeles Review of Books
 * "The Anxiety That Binds" The New York Times
 * "The Afterlife of Pia Farrenkopf" The New Yorker
 * "Household Object: Taxidermied Alligator Head" The Believer
 * "Gaslit Nation" Medium
 * "Luxury Shopping from the Other Side of the Register" The New Yorker
 * "How I Should Have Known Trump Would Be Elected President" HTMLGiant
 * "How to Almost Probably Not Die of Rabies" The Rumpus
 * "What the Color of Your Urine Says About You" The Toast
 * "On the Mirror and the Echo" SmokeLong Quarterly

Travel, Food and Fashion Writings

 * “Cuba: My Brother, My Teacher” The New York Times
 * "The Imaginary Republic of Molossia" VICE
 * “A New Generation is Taking on L.A.’s Latinx Beauty Rituals” Vogue
 * “The Modern Woman Is Embracing Her Inner Witch” Harper’s Bazaar
 * "The Piglet: Kachka vs. Six Seasons" Food52
 * "A Few Words in Praise of Eggnog" The New Yorker

Awards Won

 * Bard Fiction Prize / National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize / Crawford Award / Shirley Jackson Award / Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction / American Booksellers Association's Indies Choice Book Awards / New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's Book of the Year / Bisexual Book Award for Fiction / Richard Yates Short Story Prize / Best of Philly: Writer on the Rise / Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize

Awards Finalist

 * National Book Award / LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction / PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction / Kirkus Prize / Calvino Prize / World Fantasy Award / Nebula Award / Franz Kafka Award in Magic Realism / storySouth Million Writers Award / Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction / Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction / Tiptree Award / The Dylan Thomas Prize / Bisexual Book Award for Best Writer of the Year / Locus Awards

Awards Long-Listed

 * The Story Prize / John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer / Hugo Award

Anthologies

 * Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2018 Selection / Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 Selection / Best American Essays 2018 Notable Essay / Best American Short Stories 2018 Distinguished Story / Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5 Selection / Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Selection / Best Horror of the Year, Volume 8 Selection / Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017 Selection / Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2 Selection / The New Voices of Fantasy Selection / Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 Notable Story / Pushcart Prize XL: The Best of the Small Presses Honorable Mention / Best American Essays 2016 Notable Essay / Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Notable Story / Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 Notable Story

Fellowships and Grants

 * Guggenheim Fellowship / The Elizabeth George Foundation / Speculative Literature Foundation Diverse Writers Grant / CINTAS Foundation Fellowship / Michener-Copernicus Foundation / The Wallace Foundation

Residencies

 * Headlands Center for the Arts / Hedgebrook / Millay Colony for the Arts / Playa / Spruceton Inn / Wurlitzer Foundation / Yaddo