Trudy Lewis is the author of the short story collection The Bones of Garbo and the novel Private Correspondences. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, Cream City Review, Fence, Five Points, Meridian, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review, Third Coast, and others. She is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Missouri.

“Mother of Animals” was originally written and performed for the Anvil/lyre production “Screenplay.” The story was generated through a reading of Native American petroglyphs and pictographs of the Southwest.