Paris Wife (McLain) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Where— Fresno, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Ohio


Paula McLain is an American author best known for her novel, The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage. That work became a long-time New York Times bestseller. Her 2015 novel centering on female aviator Beryl Markham was released to excellent reviews in 2015. 

McLain has also published two collections of poetry in 1999 and 2005, a memoir about growing up in the foster system in 2003, and the novel A Ticket to Ride in 2008.

McLain was born in Fresno, California. Her mother vanished when she was four, and her father was in and out of jail, leaving McLain and her two sisters (one older, one younger) to move in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. It was an ordeal described in her memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses.

When she aged out of the system, McLain supported herself by working in various jobs before discovering she could write. Eventually, she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as the recipient of fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She lives in Cleveland with her family. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2015.)