Margaret Mackinnon is the author of The Invented Child, winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award and the 2014 Literary Award in Poetry from the Library of Virginia. A chapbook, Naming the Natural World, was published by The Sow's Ear Poetry Review in 2018. She attended Vassar College and the University of North Carolina and completed the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Florida. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Blackbird. She leads writing workshops in Richmond, Virginia, where she lives with her family.