Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Preston) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—June 25, 1953
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A.,
   Brown University
• Currently—lives in Charlottesville, Virginia


As a girl growing up in Lake Forest, Illinois, Caroline Preston used to pore through her grandmother’s and mother’s scrapbooks and started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school.  She majored in American Studies at Dartmouth College, and received a master’s in American Civilization from Brown University. Inspired by her interest  in manuscripts and ephemera, she worked as an archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.

Preston is the author of three previous novels. Jackie by Josie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. Gatsby’s Girl chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. In The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, she has drawn from her own collection of vintage ephemera to create a novel in the unique form of a scrapbook.

Preston has been awarded a Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale, where she is a Distinguished Artist.  She lives with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman, in Charlottesville, Virginia and has three mostly grown-up sons. (From the author's website.)