Her first book, the story collection Bodies at Sea (1989), features a range of characters from a coal miner to college professor who engage in surprising actions.
Her novels include The Baby Tree (2002), The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (2008), which draws on her own family history to describe the price one woman pays for independence, and Better Food for a Better World (2013), the story of six idealistic college friends who band together to open the Natural High Ice Cream parlor only to find life intruding on their dreams, until … .
A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1988–90),[4] she has received fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the corporations of MacDowell and Yaddo.
Born and raised in Redondo Beach, California, McGraw received her MFA at Indiana University Bloomington and has lived in the Midwest ever since.
[5] Now an emeritus member of the faculty,[6] McGraw taught in the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Ohio State University alongside her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins, until her retirement.