A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, she has worked as a translator of Italian literature to English and wrote the novels The Center of Things (2001), No Ordinary Matter (2004), and A Man of No Moon (2007).
[4] In 1984, she was granted a Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York Fellowship to continue her graduate studies in Scotland.
[5] Originally a translator, she began in the 1990s with Italian-English translations such as Pope John Paul II's Crossing the Threshold of Hope (which she did alongside her sister Martha McPhee), as well as works from authors such as Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, Curzio Malaparte, Paolo Maurensig, Anna Maria Ortese, and Franco Quadri [it].
[7] After publishing the 2000 book Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits with her sisters Martha and Laura McPhee, she started moving into novels, with her debut being The Center of Things (2001), about a tabloid reporter and her relationship with the husband of a celebrity whose obituary she is writing.
[1] She published another novel, No Ordinary Matter (2004), about a journey of two sisters searching for answers about their late father.