Erin McGraw

Erin McGraw is the author of six books, most recently the novel Better Food for a Better World (Slant Books, 2013). Her stories and essays have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Atlantic, STORY, the Southern Review, Allure, and other magazines and journals. She lives in Tennessee with her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins.

Cat

Rock and Roll: Triptych

Life Drawing

Bodies At Sea

Until It Comes Closer

The Landscape of Story (on The Long White by Sharon Dilworth; Wind by Leigh Allison Wilson; Useful Gifts by Carole L. Glickfeld; & On the Island by Josephine Jacobsen)

Styles & Variations (on The Widow’s Boy by Dev Hathaway; The Price of Eggs by Anne Panning; Isobars by Janette Turner Hospital; Like Love, But not Exactly by François Camoin; The Mountains Won’t Remember Us by Robert Morgan; & The Real Thing by Doris Lessing)

Related Stories (on Moses Supposes by Ellen Currie; Silent Passengers by Larry Woiwode; All My Relations by Christopher Mcllroy; Home at Last by Jean McGarry; & Various Antidotes by Joanna Scott)

Bit Players (on Stealing Time by Mary Grimm; Watch with Me and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch by Wendell Berry; In the Walled City by Stewart O’Nan; and The Good Doctor by Susan Onthank Mates)

Daily Affirmations

Exclusionary Principles (on The Point by Charles D’Ambrosio; Blue Spruce by David Long; Kneeling on Rice by Elizabeth Denton; and Open Secrets by Alice Munro)

Voice-Over (on Alabama Bound: Contemporary Stories of a State, edited by James E. Colquitt; Nervous Dancer by Carol Lee Lorenzo; Beyond Telling by Jewel Mogan; Mississippi History by Steve Yarbrough; and Can You Get There from Here? by Donley Watt)

Nor Good Red Herring: Novellas and Stories (on What They Tell You to Forget: A Novella and Stories by Fred Pfeil; Flights in the Heavenlies by Ernest J. Finney; Solo Spinout: Stories and a Novella by Ann Nietzke; Because We Are Here by Chuck Wachtel; and Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett)

Telling Lives (on The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff; You’re So Beautiful by Eileen FitzGerald; The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped by Marie Sheppard Williams; and After Rain by William Trevor)

Larger Concerns (on Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter; Believers: A Novella and Stories by Charles Baxter; Hints of His Mortality by David Borofka; Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill; and Bear and His Daughter: Stories by Robert Stone)

In Place (on The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin by Maeve Brennan; Under The Red Flag by Ha Jin; She Loved Me Once and Other Stories by Lester Goran; and Quake by Nance Van Winckel)

Familiar Pleasures: Some Masters (on The Atonement and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss; Aliens of Affection by Padgett Powell; Open to the Public: New and Collected Stories by Muriel Spark; and The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud)

Stories That Work (on The Coast of Good Intentions by Michael Byers; The Buddha in Malibu: New and Selected Stories by William Harrison; Circumnavigation by Steve Lattimore; and Cheaters and Other Stories by Dean Albarelli)

Man Walks into a Bar (on Park City: New and Selected Stories by Ann Beattie; Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories by Jill McCorkle; Soon: Tales from Hospice by A. G. Mojtabai; and Birds of America by Lorrie Moore)

Brute Force: Violent Stories (on What Salmon Know by Elwood Reid; How Animals Mate by Daniel Mueller; The Wonders of the Invisible World by David Gates; Poachers: Stories by Tom Franklin; and Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx)

Authoritative Voice (on The Drowning and Other Stories by Edward J. Delaney; The Baby Can Sing and Other Stories by Judith Slater; My Father, Dancing by Bliss Broyard; and Welding with Children by Tim Gautreaux)

Articles of Faith (on Pastoralia by George Saunders; One Day in the Life of a Born Again Loser and Other Stories by Helen Norris; Bad Jews and Other Stories by Gerald Shapiro; and The Stories of J. F. Powers by J. F. Powers)

Comfort