Born: 1965
Ohio connection: Resident
Cleveland
Paula McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California Court System, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. After aging out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nursing assistant in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto-plant worker, a cocktail waitress—before discovering she could (and very much wanted to) write. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996. Since then, she has been a resident at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Ucross Foundation, and a recipient of fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Her first book of poetry, Less of Her, was published in 1999 from New Issues Press and won a publication grant from the Greenwall Fund of the Academy of American Poets. She’s also the author of a second collection of poetry Stumble, Gorgeous, and a memoir, Like Family : Growing Up In Other People’s Houses.
In February, 2011, her second book, The Paris Wife, was a historical novel published by Ballantine Books. It gave a fictional account of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage and upstart years in 1920’s Paris, as told from the point of view of his wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1891-1979). In its March 8, 2011 review of the novel, Kirkus considered The Paris Wife “A pleasure to read—and a pleasure to see Hadley Richardson presented in a sympathetic light.” It also found McLain’s depiction of Hemingway to be “outwardly a touch less obdurate than even Hemingway’s own depiction of himself . . . The closing pages, in particular, are both evocative and moving, taking in the sweep of events over a third of a century and providing a resolution that, if not neat, is wholly in character.” As of September, 2024, the first edition hardcover of The Paris Wife was rated 13,731 times on Amazon with an aggregate rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars.
Circling the Sun, McLain’s second book, was published by Ballantine in July 2015. Set in 1920’s Kenya, the historical novel focuses upon the life, love, and exploits of aviatrix Beryl Markham, who, in 1936, was the first woman to make a solo flight from England to the United States. Praised by Kirkus (July 28, 2015) for its “sparkling prose and sympathetic reimagining,” Circling the Sun, as of September, 2024, had been rated 26,016 times in Amazon with an aggregate rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars.
McLain revisited the life of Ernest Hemingway in her 2018 novel, Love and Ruin. Published by Ballantine, the novel is set in 1937 Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). War correspondent Martha Gellhorn encounters Hemingway who is in Madrid covering the conflict for American Alliance Newspapers. Traveling together, they experience the carnage and horror of war first hand. Forced to flee to Cuba by the ascendancy of dictator Francisco Franco to power, Gellhorn and Hemingway ‘s relationship changes dynamics when his popularity reaches new heights.
In 2021, McLain’s fifth novel, When the Stars Go Out, features police detective Anna Hart who struggles to cope with her role in her two-year-old daughter’s accidental death. Published in April, 2021, by Ballantine Books, When the Stars Go Out had a 4.2 rating out of five stars on Amazon with 6, 309 votes.
As of September, 20124, McLain has published to volumes of poetry. Less of Her, was published in 1999 by New Issues Poetry Press. In 2005, her second volume, Stumble, Gorgeous was also published by New Issues Press.
She teaches in the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College, and lives with her family in Cleveland.
Awards:
Ohio Arts Council Fellowship; National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship; 2011 Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature