Carmen Maria Machado

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Carmen Maria Machado
Born	(1986-07-03) July 3, 1986 (age 35)
Occupation	Writer
Language	English
Nationality	American
Alma mater	American University[1] Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA)
Genre	Science fiction, fantasy, horror
Notable works	Her Body and Other Parties (2017) In the Dream House (2019)
Notable awards	Folio Prize 2021 winner National Book Award finalist
Years active	2011–present
Spouse	Val Howlett[1]
Website
carmenmariamachado.com

Carmen Maria Machado (born 1986) is an American short story author, essayist, and critic frequently published in The New Yorker, Granta, Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award^[2] and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. Her stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best Weird Fiction^[3], Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, The New Voices of Fantasy, and Best Women's Erotica. Her story collection Her Body and Other Parties was published in 2017. Her memoir In the Dream House was published in 2019 and won the 2021 Folio Prize.^[4] Machado is queer and lives in Philadelphia with her wife Val Howlett.^[5][6]

Early life[]

Carmen Maria Machado was raised by her parents in Allentown, an hour north of Philadelphia. Her father was the son of two immigrants, with his own father moving to the United States from Cuba at the age of 18.^[7] Machado's grandfather worked in the US Patent Office and met his future wife when she immigrated to the U.S. from Austria after World War II.^[7]

Machado struggled with her weight when she was younger. This struggle mostly stemmed from her inability to find nice-fitting clothes that were also in style.^[8] Her fascination with fashion and beauty started at a young age when she watched her grandmother get herself ready for the day by using different vials of perfume and jars of makeup. To young Machado, beauty and fashion was a form of magic.^[9]

Machado grew up in a very religious United Methodist household, and this upbringing led to her feeling guilty about her sexuality for several years.^[10] She saw Titanic when she was just 11 years old, and this is where she first developed her love of tragedy movies and stories. The drawing scene in Titanic was the first time Machado recognized that she found the female body attractive.^[11]

Education[]

Machado completed her undergraduate studies in 2008^[12] and received her bachelor's degree from the American University in Washington D.C.^[13] Machado earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has received fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the University of Iowa, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.^[5] Machado also attended the Clarion Workshop where she studied under authors such as Ted Chiang.^[14]

Influences[]

Machado says her writing has been influenced by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi, and Yōko Ogawa.^[14] In particular, Machado says she was heavily influenced by Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was given to her to read by an "insightful and amazing English teacher" when she was in the 10th grade of high school.^[15]

Career[]

Machado worked in the Iowa Writer's Workshop for two years after receiving her MFA. She met her now wife Val Howlett while in Iowa. After a rejection from Starbucks in 2013, she took up work at Lush, a soap store, while she taught writing as an adjunct professor at Rosemont College and other schools in the area. She also did freelance writing while she lived in Pennsylvania.^[12]

Machado's short stories, essays, and criticism have been published in a number of magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, Tin House, Lightspeed Magazine, Guernica, AGNI, National Public Radio, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, and other publications. Her stories have also been reprinted in anthologies such as Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, and Best Women's Erotica. Machado's short story "Horror Story," originally published in Granta in 2015, details a lesbian couple's difficulty coping with a haunting in their new house.^[16][17]

Machado's fiction has been called "strange and seductive" and it has been said that her "work doesn't just have form, it takes form."^[18] Her fiction has been a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette,^[19] the Shirley Jackson Award,^[20] the Franz Kafka Award in Magic Realism, the storySouth Million Writers Award, and the Calvino Prize from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisville. An analysis by Io9 indicated that if not for the Sad Puppies ballot manipulation campaign, Machado would have been a finalist for the 2015 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.^[21] In 2018, she won the Bard Fiction Prize.^[22]

Her horror-inspired short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was published by Graywolf Press in 2017.^[23] It was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction,^[2] won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award John Leonard Prize,^[24] and was shortlisted for the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize.^[25] The collection has been optioned by FX and a television show is in development by Gina Welch.^[26]

As of 2018, she is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.^[27] Machado is a 2019 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.^[28]

Machado was Guest Editor of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edition.^[29] Her sci fi short stories have appeared in volumes including Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Matthew David Goodwin with an introduction by Frederick Luis Aldama.^[30]

Personal life[]

An image depicting some of Machado's fashion choices that she makes as a plus sized woman. She often wears simple black tops, glasses, and large earrings.

Machado speaks out against domestic violence in lesbian relationships in her memoir In the Dream House. She points out that abuse in same-gender relationships is often overlooked as the victim usually blames themself. She also explained her mindset that led to her, and many others, staying in abusive relationships. People in lesbian relationships often do not understand they are being abused as domestic violence resources are aimed at women in heterosexual relationships.^[31] She speaks out against homophobia in her book as many people often ignore abuse in lesbian relationships due to prejudice.^[32] This prejudice is the cause of archival silence about queer relationships.^[33]

As a plus sized woman herself, Machado talks about body positivity very often. She disagrees with the notion that fat people should be shamed for their size and asked to minimize their bodies. She prefers to use life hacks to dress herself and feel good about herself rather than an intense focus on weight loss.^[8] Machado believes that beauty, skincare, and fashion are for everyone, not just people with a specific body shape or size.^[9]

Machado believes that her writings are forms of activism. She believes that the world was modeled around white, cisgendered, able-bodied, straight males, so writings by anyone who does not fit those standards are a form of activism as they promote respect and civility for people of all backgrounds.^[10] Machado says that a form of activism is casually being queer or a woman writing about sex. Being a woman writing about sex or being queer does not define who a person is, so it does not have to be brought into a conversation unless it is pertinent. Machado thinks this is a very important way to make sure her writing is realistic.^[11]

Although she is hesitant to call herself atheist, Machado does not believe in God. She refers to the universe itself as an organism whose actions do not directly influence her daily life.^[34]

Writing style[]

Machado does not have prologues in her books, or the prologues are very short as she finds prologues to be "tedious".^[35] Although her writing references many different genres,^[13] much of her work carries dystopian or horror undertones, a reference to her influence by Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson. Although she does not consider herself to be very religious, some of her writings that fall under the magical genre were inspired by her imagination that developed as a result of her religious upbringing.^[34]

In the Dream House[]

This memoir details an abusive relationship that Machado lived through. She exhibits her dystopian writing skills by telling the story of how her seemingly utopian partnership turned into a dystopian, abusive relationship. Machado uses fantasy and magical tropes throughout her memoir as she uses titles for her chapters like "Dream House as Folktale Taxonomy". She makes references to many fairy tales like the little mermaid, and there are references to her ex-girlfriend being witchlike.^[33]

Machado dives into the history of abuse in queer relationships.^[36] In this memoir, she speaks about the archival silence around domestic abuse in queer relationships. She explains her confusion with dealing with her abusive ex as there was almost no documentation of abusive relationships between lesbian partners. She also details the difficulty with legal proceedings as the legal system did not count her as a victim because her abuse was primarily psychological, verbal, and emotional rather than physical.^[35]

Bibliography[]

Short stories[]

• "The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" (Granta)
• "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (Harper's Bazaar)
• "Mary When You Follow Her" (VQR)
• "Eight Bites" (Gulf Coast)
• "Blur" (Tin House)
• "The Husband Stitch" (Granta)
• "Horror Story" (Granta)
• "Inventory" (Strange Horizons)
• "Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead" (Lightspeed Magazine)
• "Especially Heinous" (The American Reader)
• "Mothers" (Interfictions)
• "The Book of the Dead" (BBC Radio 4)
• "Haunt" (Conjunctions)
• "A Cat, a Bride, a Servant" (Garage)
• "A Brief and Fearful Star" (Slate/Future Tense)
• "Relaxation Technique" (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)
• "Miss Laura's School for Esquire Men" (Tin House)
• "Vacation" (Wigleaf)
• "The Old Women Who Were Skinned" (Fairy Tale Review)
• "Descent" (Nightmare Magazine)
• "My Body, Herself" (Uncanny Magazine)
• "Observations About Eggs from the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa" (Lightspeed Magazine)

Books[]

• Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU (novella, The American Reader, May 2013)
• Her Body and Other Parties (story collection, Graywolf Press, 2017; Shirley Jackson Award winner, single-author collection)
• In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019) – Rathbones Folio Prize 2021

See also[]

• Cross-genre
• Latino literature
• Latino poetry
• Weird fiction

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Carmen Maria Machado

• Official website
• Carmen Maria Machado at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database