GRATEFULLY & AFFECTIONATELY

Between 1958 and 1976, the Irish American writer Mary Lavin had sixteen stories published in The New Yorker, after J. D. Salinger introduced her to the magazine. It was a prolific time for Lavin, helped in no small part by her close working relationship with her chief editor there, Rachel MacKenzie. They wrote nearly four-hundred letters to each other, the topics of which ranged from story edits to holiday plans, windfalls and legal troubles, mutual literary friends and their love of gardening,