Skip to main content

Heather McGowan

Biography

Heather McGowan

Heather McGowan is the author of FRIENDS OF THE MUSEUM, SCHOOLING, and DUCHESS OF NOTHING. SCHOOLING was named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, the Detroit Free Press, and the Hartford Courant. McGowan received an MFA from Brown University and has been awarded the Rome Prize in Literature and the Berlin Prize Fellowship for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin.

Heather McGowan

Books by Heather McGowan

by Heather McGowan - Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Literary Fiction

When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a 24-hour roller-coaster ride. Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters: Chris, Shay and Henry. Orbiting Diane is a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation: among them a line cook staring down a huge opportunity he’s not sure he wants; a costume curator stuck in an inescapable rut; and the ambivalent curator of the museum’s film program, whose first day on the job might very well be his last. On this day of the museum’s annual gala, every plate that Diane has kept spinning will fall and by daybreak, someone will be dead.