“Slaughter admirably conveys a heightened awareness of how we harbor within our tamed lives an undeniable wildness.”— - Library Journal
“[A] gritty debut fiction collection…[readers] will appreciate Slaughter’s storytelling chops.”— - Publishers Weekly
"With a poet’s lyricism, Erin Slaughter crafts a debut collection that is speculative, dark, and thoroughly feral." - Electric Literature
"This deeply imagined, brilliantly ferocious debut collection sits perfectly among the fiction of Danielle Lazarin and Kelly Link. A Manual for How to Love Us lays bare the power and wildness of grief. It is unequivocally one of the best debut collections I’ve read in years." - Peter Kispert, author of I Know You Know Who I Am
"A Manual for How to Love Us is a collection that reads like a wolf howl, every page alive with longing and hunger and desire and rage. Erin Slaughter writes with tenderness—capturing the sweet intimacies of friendship, of kindness in unexpected places—but also with an unflinching eye for the pain that connects us, shapes us, makes us who we are. This is prose from a poet’s heart." - Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria
“Erin Slaughter’s debut collection, A Manual for How to Love Us, is an evocative mix of strange realism and Bachelardian obsession. Slaughter is a gifted stylist who can instill the most mundane objects with profound meaning and depth. In her world, a tongue is never only a tongue, a thorn far more than a thorn, and even a fly–buzzing alone in a bedroom–harbors the impact of a father.” - Isle McElroy, author of The Atmospherians and People Collide
“Stunningly fierce … Slaughter intentionally blurs the line between real and unreal and ghosts and people, creating a spellbinding tilt across stories and worlds. This dark but whimsical collection is perfect for fans of magical realism and strong female characters." - Booklist
“The stories in A Manual for How to Love Us read like a cold ocean swim: salty and refreshing and sincere, each a bracing exploration of the particular blessings and burdens of womanhood in all its ugliness and glory. I couldn’t ask for something stranger or more beautiful. Erin Slaughter is a masterful sentence writer in firm command of her craft, and this book is an inspiration and a gift.” - Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild