Gifted writer of prose, creative non-fiction, and poetry, Colleen J. McElroy is a professor of English

and creative writing at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

Her publications include Jesus and Fat Tuesday, Driving Under the Cardboard Pines -

both fiction - and What Madness Brought Me Here - New and Selected

Poems 1968-88, Queen of the Ebony Isles,(winner of the American Book Award), and

Travelling Music (poems), A Long Way From St. Louie

(travel memoir), and most recently, Over the Lip of the World:

Among the Storytellers of Madagascar.

McElroy has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships,

two Fulbright Fellowships, a Dupont Visiting Scholar Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship.

Biography

Click on the pictures to view excerpts

Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar
University of Washington Press (Seattle), Copyright © 1999 by Colleen J. McElroy

McElroy - one of the country's most versatile writers - scores large with this book about her adventures among the storytellers of Madagascar. Her characters and scenes are as fabulous as those found in a novel. - Ishmael Reed
Travelling Music
StoryLine Press (Ashland, OR), Copyright © 1998 by Colleen J. McElroy

McElroy writes of travel...the migrations of sleep, mortality, time, and imagination. The result is a poetry of kickass similes and mentioned unmentionables. In an age of well-behaved poetics, such and uncompromising stand is as necessary as it is refreshing. - Alice Fulton
A Long Way from St. Louie
Coffee House Press (Minneapolis, MN), Copyright © 1997 by Colleen J. McElroy

McElroy's marvelous sense of humor shines out and her deeply-felt sense of otherness...colors her musings, giving them texture and depth. This is a stunning piece of writing. - Kirkus Review