Welcome to my site. I’m a fiction writer whose work has been published in Canadian and American journals and in a British anthology. My novel-in-stories Plastic was published by the Porcupine’s Quill in 2017.
Reviews for Plastic
With Plastic, Margaret Gracie explores how hyper-capitalist values infiltrate our minds and dominate our bodies. The Sanderson family offers us a mirror, demonstrating the unfairness of expectations placed on mothers versus those placed on fathers, and the shallowness of our money- and beauty-obsessed culture. A potent, ambitious debut.
-Deborah Willis, author of The Dark and Other Love Stories, long-listed for a Giller Prize
Margaret Gracie’s Plastic revolves around the life of Debbie, a former Miss America, and the power and damage her extraordinary beauty can wield. Via Gracie’s deft storytelling in multiple points of view, we’re transported into a world where appearances hold massive importance—at a cost that goes far beyond skin deep.
-Julie Paul, author of The Jealousy Bone and The Pull of the Moon
This collection of interwoven stories offers a devastating examination of the current cultural belief that money and beauty are at the heart of happiness. Mentoring Margaret Gracie a few years ago, I was struck then, as I am now, by her critical understanding of these ‘‘plastic’’ characters whose lives she dissects with a sharp and clever knife, but also with great compassion for their struggle … each one of them trying to find some deeper, more meaningful reality than the superficial values encasing and imprisoning them.
—Isabel Huggan, author of Belonging: Home Away from Home
I am currently working on a novel set in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood in Montréal.
I have worked as an editor and writer for the Canadian government for the last decade. In 2023, I edited the book J.E.H. MacDonald Up Close: The Artist’s Materials and Techniques (published by Goose Lane Editions).