Acree Graham Macam is the author of The King of the Birds (Groundwood, 2016), a children’s book about Flannery O’Connor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Harvard Review, the Massachusetts Review, Nerve, and others. She will complete her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program in January 2025.
Growing up in North Carolina, I knew of three guns in my home. First, there was the BB rifle that rested barrel-up against the corner of the wall behind my…