"How happy I am to make the acquaintance of the characters in Molly McCaffrey’s stories—the girls and women who face the world with gusto, sometimes make unwise decisions, and sometimes find themselves put upon by circumstances beyond their control. The stories in How to Survive Graduate School and Other Disasters are gritty and tender. They are brave stories, written with grace and precision."

—Lee Martin,

Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Bright Forever

"How to Survive Graduate School and Other Disasters, this entertaining collection of stories, explores a variety of psychological experiences in friendships, relationships—duos, triangles, and quadrangles—and family, with fine insights and epiphanies. Coming of age happens early in Girl Scout camps and continues through grad school and retirement in Florida. Altogether, a marvelous and enlightening read."

—Josip Novakovich,

American Book Award winner and author of Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust

“A powerful first collection. Molly McCaffrey’s intelligent heroines get themselves into and out of pairings—and threesomes—of every description, both sexual and emotional. And they sound good doing it, like someone you’d want to know.”

—Eric Goodman,

author of Child of My Right Hand

"The stories in How To Survive Graduate School and Other Disasters are bright in both senses of the word: they shimmer with clarity, and they are smart as hell. The almost-Ph.D. protagonist of the collection’s title story concludes that she doesn’t want to theorize and analyze—she only wants to tell stories. And in the raw and riveting stories that follow, the characters survive by telling themselves stories, stories that reject the disasters of their real lives where they are hurt by friends and boyfriends and dissertation directors—and, always, by themselves. Molly McCaffrey’s piercing collection reveals that life is a series of disasters, and that stories may be our only survival."

—Kelcey Parker,

author of For Sale by Owner

“McCaffrey's stories of sorrowed and bitter women, ex-patriate wannabes and disillusioned grad students, make for disturbing reading. With skill and precision, McCaffrey displays the fruits of intellectualism gone awry.”