September 11, 2018 at 1:42 am

McCrary’s Debut Memoir Released to Excellent Reviews

Micah McCrary

by Kristin Distel

Micah McCrary’s debut memoir, Island in the City, published by the University of Nebraska Press, received advanced praise from reviewers.

McCrary is a doctoral candidate studying rhetoric and composition in Ohio University’s English Department; he has a secondary specialization in creative writing (nonfiction). His memoir grows out of his work as a Master of Fine Arts student at Columbia College Chicago and his studies at OHIO.

“In Island in the City Micah McCrary dares over and over again to articulate the consequences of race, place, and the perils of having a sensitive and very particular sentience. Daring nonfiction is never quite normal; it is always an island in a city of conventional thought. McCrary’s work gives the reader this refuge and this challenge,” says David Lazar, author of I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms.

“A slim yet potent and intimately ruminative debut memoir on travel, maturity, and culture,” says the Kirkus Review.

“I’m very grateful that the book has come out,” McCrary says. “Having it published has been a strange experience because, unlike with shorter pieces of writing, the wait is obviously longer—this makes it challenging at times to keep focused on the work in terms of revising or re-framing it. I’m glad I’ve now practiced doing this with a larger rather than a brief project.”

McCrary’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Rumpus, Midwestern Gothic, Identity Theory, and Third Coast. He is an assistant editor at Hotel Amerika, a contributing editor at Assay, and a founding coeditor of con•text. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia College Chicago.

Island in the City is available for purchase at the Little Professor Book Center, the University of Nebraska Press’s website, Amazon, and other booksellers.