Margaret Wrinkle

Born and raised in Birmingham Alabama, Margaret Wrinkle is a writer, filmmaker, educator and visual artist. Her debut novel, Wash, published by Grove Atlantic, reexamines American slavery in ways that challenge contemporary assumptions about race, power, history and healing. It has won the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Wash has also been named the Fiction Runner Up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a finalist for the 2014 Chautauqua Prize, a Wall Street Journal top ten novel of the year, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an O Magazine top ten selection and a People magazine 4-star pick.

Wrinkle has received a residency from Hedgebrook and the Griot Award for outstanding storytelling of diverse cultural heritage by the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail of Mobile. Her award-winning documentary broken\ground, made with Chris Lawson about the racial divide in her historically conflicted hometown, was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and was a winner of the Council on Foundations Film Festival. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and lives in rural New Mexico.