Mary Ann McGuigan
New release
That Very Place
In this new collection of short stories, the familiar is laced with something unruly. The characters find themselves in places they’d rather not be, bound by connections they can’t break. As their lives unravel, they’re forced to see the damage they’ve inflicted and the pain they’ve been avoiding. They must face the choices left to them. What awaits may be the answer they didn’t expect.
About Mary Ann
Mary Ann McGuigan’s short stories and creative nonfiction are published widely in literary journals, including The Sun, Massachusetts Review, The Rumpus, X-R-A-Y, Pithead Chapel, and many others. Her collection Pieces includes fiction named for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. That Very Place, her new collection, reaches bookstores on September 9, 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s YA novels as best books for teens, and Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award.
“[Pieces is] full of haunting intangibles that will resonate instantly with readers. A careful and extremely sensitive work of generational fiction.” — Kirkus
Author Visits
The historical events depicted in Mary Ann’s novels make them excellent vehicles for using fiction to discuss continuing social issues: interracial friendship, civil rights, overcoming poverty, teenage drinking, homelessness, domestic violence, and alcoholism.
She tailors her visits to schools, libraries, and bookstores to discuss the themes most important to them.
New & Noteworthy
Meet Keira. She’s learning the cost of a dream.
Keira is sixteen and she wants to be a dancer. A ballet dancer. But that takes training and training costs money, which her mother doesn’t have. They can’t afford to…
Meet Alan. He’s about to discover the unexpected.
Alan is a young man from an upper-middle-class family, a reluctant student at New York University, and a lost soul. Because he doesn’t know who he is anymore. All his…
Saying what they don’t want to know
Some things are hard to talk about—especially with a parent. For some teenagers, talking is beyond hard. It’s dangerous. Because the subject is forbidden. There’s too much at stake. In…
Meet Dearnon. His world is about to change.
Marty Dearnon owns a convenience store of sorts, about three hours from Laramie, Wyoming. When he bought it six years ago, it was his pride and joy. “He’d polished the…
The Cost of Words Unspoken
“The cost of words unspoken” can bankrupt us, trap us in unending regret. For Dearnon, the shop owner in “The Broken Place,” the tentacles of regret have spread to every…
Meet Maria. Her life was filled with hope, until it wasn’t.
In “Beloved,” the opening story in That Very Place, a woman is waiting for her pants to dry in a Laundromat in Queens. Everyone else is waiting for the arrival of the…
Another inspiring conference at VCFA
I just got back from the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. I was delighted to have the chance to work with Sonja Livingston and the gifted writers in her creative…
More Praise for That Very Place
We all strive to be honest with ourselves. But how many of us would be ready to admit we’ve been “complicit in the traumas inflicted on the people we love”?…