Merrill Gilfillan is the award-winning short-story writer and poet whose Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains won the first PEN/Martha Albrand Award for non-fiction. Six years later, Gilfillan returns to the genre with a new collection of poetic essays that grew from his travels along the backroads of Appalachia.

Critical praise for Burnt House to Paw Paw

"He lets the facts rise up in all their riprap in/congruity. He writes of pie, and murders, and when he writes about birdsong and "the like," it may be the most glorious nature writing we've had since Moby Dick."

"Burnt House to Paw Paw proves beyond a doubt that Merrill Gilfillan is heir to the gifts of Basho and Thoreau. This is an extraordinary book by a remarkable writer."

"...he sees time as born of nature and ourselves as children of both."

All about Merrill Gilfillan

Merrill Gilfillan was born in Ohio in 1945, and raised there. He attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1967, where he won the Major Hopwood Prize for poetry in his senior year. He attended the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop for two years, studying with Ted Berrigan, Anslem Hollo, and George Starbuck among others. He lived and worked in New York City for eight years, and then moved to Colorado, where he wrote feature stories for Boulder/Denver newspapers. His first book of essays, Magpie Rising; Sketches from the Great Plains, won the first PEN/Martha Albrand Award for non-fiction in 1989. He makes his home in Colorado.

Other books by Merrill Gilfillan

Magpie Rising; Sketches from the Great Plains, Pruett/Vintage, 1988
Sworn Before Cranes, Crown Publishing, 1994

Awards and Honors:

1967 Major Hopwood Prize, University of Michigan
1989 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Non-fiction (Magpie Rising)
1994 Ohiana Fiction Award (Sworn Before Cranes)
1994 Colorado Book Awards Finalist (Sworn Before Cranes)