Singing Lessons

Kevin "Mc" McIlvoy published six novels, One Kind Favor, A Waltz (Lynx House Press), The Fifth Station (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; paperback, Collier/Macmillan), Little Peg (Atheneum/Macmillan; paperback, Harper Perennial), Hyssop (TriQuarterly Books; paperback, Avon), and At the Gate of All Wonder (Tupelo Press); a short story collection, The Complete History of New Mexico (Graywolf Press); and a collection of prose poems and short fictions, 57 Octaves Below Middle C (Four Way Books). His short fiction has appeared in Harper's, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Missouri Review, and other literary magazines. His short-short stories, poems, and prose poems have appeared in Scoundrel Time, The Collagist, Pif, Kenyon Review Online, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, Prime Number, r.k.v.r.y, Willow Springs, Waxwing, and numerous other literary magazines. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction. For twenty-seven years he was fiction editor and editor in chief of the national literary magazine, Puerto del Sol. He taught in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program in Creative Writing from 1987 to 2019; he taught as a Regents Professor of Creative Writing in the New Mexico State University MFA Program from 1981 to 2008. He served as a faculty member at national conferences, including the Ropewalk Writing Conference, the Rising Stars Writing Conference, the Writers at Work Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writing Conference. He was a manuscript consultant for several university presses and other publishers. He served on the Board of Directors of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. He died September 30, 2022.