ABOUT

Erin Ganaway grew up on a horse farm on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia. With maternal heritage in the southern Appalachians and paternal heritage dating back to Mayflower settlers on Cape Cod, her childhood summers spanned the distance between snapping beans on the front porch of her grandparents’ Appalachian farmhouse to throwing marooned starfish back to sea out front of her family oceanside cottage. Each place has defined her. She loves finding the nuanced similarities between the two sides—the authentic characters, the evocative landscapes, the rough-hewn roots. Northern or southern, both eccentric and robust, she often draws on her origins in her writing.

Her pursuit of writing began early in life; at age eleven, she entered one of her poems into a local poetry competition at the prompting of her primary school teacher, and it won a prize that resulted in publication with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She eventually went on to study creative writing at Hollins University, where she received her degree in Master of Fine Arts. Her poetry and journalistic work have since appeared in worldwide anthologies and magazines, and she has published two collections of poetry with academic presses. She lives with her husband in Atlanta, where she is at work on a third collection of poetry and a novella.