Confessions of a Knight Errant

Drifters ,Thieves and Ali Baba's Treasure

“Gretchen McCullough has written a wild ride through Cairo and beyond, a rollicking adventure tale peopled with grifters, reprobates, scalawags, and scoundrels—plus a few femmes fatale tossed in to keep things teetering on chaos. I couldn’t put it down!”

–Tom Lutz, Portraits: Moments of Intimacy on the Road, Founder of The Los Angeles Review of Books

about Gretchen

Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999.

Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013.

Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.

A Song by the Aegean Sea: A Book of Poetry Poetry of Mohamed Metwalli

Translated by

Gretchen McCullough & Mohamed Metwalli. New York. Egret Chapbooks

IT IS RARE THAT a cover captures the essence of a poetry collection as well as does the photograph adorning the front cover of Mohamed Metwalli’s newest collection, first published in Arabic in 2015 (see WLT, May 2018, 26). The gentle, almost imperceptible coloring of the image shows the poet’s smiling face balancing his humor with the wistfulness of a writer who reaches out to grab images that capture vanishing yet vital moments. Equally importantly, it places the poet in what appears to be a seaside café in the sunshine of the Aegean. This location is what makes this particular collection so different for this poet, who is based in the megacity of Cairo. While never appearing directly in this book, the noise and chaotic intensity of the poet’s urban home provides the unspoken contrast that allows him to write with the clarity and dexterity of his Aegean retreat. DOWNLOAD REVIEW

shahrazad's gift: short fiction

By Gretchen McCullough

Gretchen McCullough’s latest book captures the magic and absurdity of the city and its people with a humour few local writers have managed to achieve.

—Egypt Today

Novel look at Egypt: history, mystery and just plain quirky for your bookshelf.

—Kate Durham, Egypt Today

McCullough displays all the idiosyncrasies of Cairo in a slightly comic, nondramatic tone. Cairo is endless amounts of fervor, hoopla, commotion, confusion and turmoil. For all its corruption, pollution, noise, havoc, chaos and double standards, Cairo is still endearing for both foreigners and Egyptians and they long for it when they leave. This is what McCullough captures best.

—Sherine Elbanhawy, Scoop Empire

Gretchen McCullough is an American academic who has lived and worked in Cairo for several years. The Cairo she writes about is full of bizarre, anarchic, extraordinary characters—a scissor-throwing Swedish belly-dancer, a man known as Ugly Duck with a colorful and very public love-life, a pair of fugitives who sneak back into the country after Tahrir. She writes cracking dialogue and deft dead-pan internal monologue. Read this book. It is very funny stuff.

—Annemarie Neary, The Orphans

Also by Gretchen

Confessions of a Knight Errant

a song by the aegean sea

THREE STORIES FROM CAIRO

Shahrazad's Gift

Praise for Gretchen 's Books

Few literary works have dealt with the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 as well as this novel did, whether in Arabic or English, by the American author, Gretchen McCullough. McCullough survived the events of the uprising at Tahrir Square—the novel focuses on a group of expatriates who stayed in the country. It would appeal to the lovers of detective novels as much it would appeal to wacky fantasy lovers and uses literary humor, which is emphasized in an alleged message by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. The reader might share the author’s sarcasm about overwhelming globalization and the American lifestyle, whose advocates want to impose it on the rest of the world. Wait! It’s not just that. The reader might get free lessons in the art of cooking.