Her family grew most of their food on their farm due to the struggle of living on one income and having to feed eight mouths in the house.
McKinney's poetry is steeped in the rural Appalachian landscape and frequently explores the connections between people and place.
During the last two years of her life, she worked tirelessly to fulfill her dream of a program at West Virginia Wesleyan College where “good writing was the center of a community, with its roots in the region of the writers yet also being able to reference the outside world”.
[7] Additionally, the West Virginia Wesleyan College has honored the late founder of the MFA program by setting up the McKinney Postgraduate Teaching Fellowship, which offers an MFA program graduate an opportunity to gain experience in teaching while being closely mentored by practiced faculty members.
I had access to a farm community, a small peaceful town and school and good, dedicated teachers.
[8] As a teacher, she taught at West Virginia Wesleyan College (Professor Emeritus - from 1971 until she went to complete her Master's and then she came back in 1991 as a professor of English and director of creative writing),[7] Buckhannon-Upshur High School (she taught now well-known novelist Jayne Anne Phillips), Western Washington University,[4] UC Santa Cruz,[4] Hamilton College,[4] Potomac State College,[7] University of Utah,[7] and Huttonsville Correctional Center.
[7] She was awarded residencies at The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference,[9] The Utah Arts Council,[9] Kentucky Foundation for Women,[9] West Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,[9] Blue Mountain Center,[13] and Potomac State College of West Virginia University named her a 2005 Whitmore-Gates Scholar.