Life

Graver was born in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, and grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts

Williamstown, Massachusetts

Williamstown is a town in Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,754 at the 2010 census...

. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 in 1986, and her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...

 in 1999. She also did graduate work at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. A recipient of fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...

, the MacDowell Colony

MacDowell Colony

The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...

, and the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, she has been a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Boston College

Boston College

Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

 since 1993. Married to civil writers lawyer James Pingeon, Graver is the mother of two young daughters.

Graver writes character-driven psychological fiction set in a wide variety of times and places, as well as more experimental short fiction, and non-fiction essays on a variety of subjects. One novel, Unravelling, is set in 19th-century America in the Lowell

Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...

 textile mills and tells the story of a fiercely independent young woman and the life she eventually fashions for herself. The Honey Thief, a contemporary novel, explores a mother/daughter relationship, as well as the fall-out of living with--and losing--a mentally ill father. In Awake, Graver uses the genetic disease Xeroderma Pigmentosum

Xeroderma pigmentosum

Xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP, is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of DNA repair in which the ability to repair damage caused by ultraviolet light is deficient. In extreme cases, all exposure to sunlight must be forbidden, no matter how small. Multiple basal cell carcinomas and other skin...

  to explore a mother's relationships with her sons, her husband and, eventually, her lover; the novel is set at a camp for children with this rare disease. In a review of Unravelling in The New York Times Book Review, Benjamin DeMott wrote, "Exceptional . . . Intensely imagined, right-valued, memorable." In a Chicago Tribune review of The Honey Thief, John Gregory Brown wrote, "One of our finest writers on the grand drama of simply growing up."

Awards

• 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
  Drue Heinz Literature Prize
  The Drue Heinz Literature Prize is a major American literary award for short fiction in the English language.This prize of the University of Pittsburgh Press in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA was initiated in 1981 by Mrs. Drue Heinz and developed by Frederick A. Hetzel...
  
  , for Have You Seen Me?
• 1991 Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine, for “The Mourning Door”
• Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1991
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1992
• MacDowell Colony Fellowships, 1997, 2009

Anthologies

• "Two Baths", The Best American Essays, 1991
• “The Mourning Door” Best American Short Stories; in Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards; and in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, all in 2001.

External links

• Washingtonpost.com Interview: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44485-2004Apr2.html
• Video Interview, 2004: http://frontrow.bc.edu/program/graver/
• New York Times Book Review: Unravelling: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EFD7173BF936A3575AC0A96F958260
• New York Times Book Review: The Honey Thief: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EFD7173BF936A3575AC0A96F958260
• "The Mourning Door": http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/the-mourning-door
• Author's website: http://www.elizabethgraver.com
• "Paper Cuts", New York Times: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/stray-questions-for-elizabeth-graver/