Cate McGowan

Cate McGowan writes fiction, poetry, and essays that lean into threshold moments and the strange beauty threaded through ordinary life. Her recent books include Sacrificial Steel (Driftwood Press, 2025), winner of the Driftwood Editors’ Pick Poetry Prize, and Writing Is Revision (Brill, 2025). Her earlier work includes the novel These Lowly Objects (Gold Wake Press) and the story collection True Places Never Are, winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and a finalist for the Lascaux Prize. Her shorter pieces have appeared in Flash Fiction International (Norton), Glimmer Train, North American Review, Shenandoah, SmokeLong Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, Trampset, Citron Review, Stonecoast Review, Chestnut Review, and Crab Orchard Review.

McGowan—affectionately called “McG” by her students—holds an M.F.A., a Ph.D., and a recent M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Florida with her husband and a willful assortment of pets; she misses her home state of Georgia.