 Burroway received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1976, which was followed by two resident fellowships at Yaddo (in Saratoga Springs, New York), one in 1985 and again in 1987.Burroway's fifth novel, "Raw Silk" took seven years to research and write, but it was responsible for introducing her to a wide popular audience.The book was also important for her personally, since she had incorporated chunks of her own life into it, a practice she had tentatively begun in "The Buzzards".