About Molly McKaughan

Molly McKaughan

Molly has been the managing editor of The Paris Review and two short lived national magazines, and a senior editor at New York Magazine. Her poetry has been published in Ms., The Paris Review, Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Works, and in the Borestone Mountain Poetry volume, The Best Poems of 1977. Her articles have been published in The Paris Review, Quest/77, People, Women’s Day, and other magazines. ​​

Learn more about Molly and her books at her website.

Molly's Books

  • The Biological Clock: Balancing Marriage, Motherhood and Career, for which she interviewed more than 100 women about their struggles to decide whether or not to have a baby as time ran out, and also describes her own quest to have a second child.
  • Recovering Myself: A Memoir in Poetry, which details her journey to sobriety—becoming a woman who no longer goes through life with a bottle in one hand and a man in the other, who is not empty inside and has no need to escape reality.
  • Behind Their Backs: A Novel - Available on Kindle from Amazon, and in paperback, is the story of two suburban couples in 1955 Philadelphia whose lives become darkly intertwined. Told from each of their four perspectives, it’s a richly psychological account of adultery, alcoholism, domestic violence, and, ultimately, redemption.
  • Dear Miss Terranova: Correspondence Between a Father and Daughter at College, 1963–1966, available on Kindle from Amazon, and in paperback, documents Molly’s unique relationship with her father, which developed partly because she was an only child who arrived late in his life, partly because of his heart condition that made her grow closer to him, and partly because of that indefinable quality, chemistry.
  • Disobedient Memories: My Hidden Childhood Revealed, available on Kindle from Amazon, and in paperback, a memoir in which Molly revisits her childhood through the lens of her mother’s letters and diaries, which often indicate a reality divergent from her own memories. It reveals a childhood shaped by anxiety and her mother’s desire to control her, often through corporal punishment.