Richard McCann

Who is Richard McCann?

Richard McCann is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he is a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.

A gay writer, he is the author of Mother of Sorrows, a collection of linked stories that novelist Michael Cunningham has described as unbearably beautiful. It won the 2005 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares and was also an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award recipient, as well as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Amazon named it one of the Top 50 Books of 2005.

McCann's book of poems, Ghost Letters, won the 1994 Beatrice Hawley and Capricorn Poetry awards. With Michael Klein, he edited Things Shaped in Passing: More 'Poets for Life' Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in The Atlantic," Esquire, Ms., Tin House, Ploughshares, and numerous anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007, Best American Essays 2000, and The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the Yaddo Corporation.