Tory McCagg earned a M.F.A. from Emerson College's writing program in 1989; her thesis and novel, Shards, won the Graduate Dean's Award. She is an accomplished flutist. She lives in New Hampshire, where she and her husband have an off-grid house with myriad chickens and two cats. Bittersweet Manor, her first published book, came out on She Writes Press in 2014 and won a Silver IPPY award for Contemporary Fiction in 2015. Her memoir At Crossroad with Chickens will come out on Bauhan Publishers in May 2020.