Robert Lacy's stories are direct, honest, grace-filled, and useful. The Natural Father is that good thing, a book that both sweetens and illuminates our lives.

I think we all wanted to be RichardYates,” his student Robert Lacy remembered. “I know for a fact that Idid. He was tall, lanky, and movie-star handsome back then, and hemoved in an aura of sad, doom-haunted, F. Scott Fitzgeraldian grace.He was Gatsby and Nick Carraway and Dick Diver all rolled into one.

Though I realize I’m crippled that is true, sir,

Please don’t judge my courage by my twisted leg,

Let me show my Uncle Sam what I can do, sir,

Let me take the Axis down a peg.

God, how we loved that song! And, God, how Yates used to love to lead us in it! No doubt there were happier moments in his life. But those were the happiest I ever saw. We’d be gathered in someone’s kitchen, our heads, including Yates’s, all leaned in close together in a drunken bouquet, and the look on his face as he put us through our musical paces would be positively beatific. Occasionally a spouse or girlfriend might stick a head in the door to see what was going on, see what all the racket was. But after one look they’d shake their heads and go away.

Books

• The Natural Father: Stories, New Rivers Press, Minneapolis, 1997, ISBN 9780898231762

Short stories

• "Win a Few Lose a Few", The Saturday Evening Post, Volume 238, Issue 25, 18 December 1965, page 70-75
• "The Natural Father", Crazyhorse, Crazyhorse Association, [Number 50, 1996?]
• "Up in the Ozarks", South Dakota Review, Fall 1997
• "Donald Ross is Dying", Ploughshares, Spring 1989
• "Second Wives" The Antioch Review, Volume 54.1, Winter 1996, page 95
• "Verlin", The Antioch Review, Volume 114.1, Winter 2006, page 143-148
• "Occurrence at 133 Park Street, Apartment 2A", The Carolina Quarterly, Volume 59.1, Winter 2008, page 48

Essays

• "Three Snapshots from a Minneapolis Album", North Stone Review, 2002
• "A Season In the Dismal Trade", The Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2003, pp. 134—142
• "Sing a Song of Sonny", Sewanee Review, Volume 114, Number 1, Spring 2005 pp. 309—316
• "From Here to Eternity and the American Experience", Sewanee Review - Volume 115, Number 4, Fall 2007, pp. 641—646
• "A Reason to Write", Sewanee Review - Volume 115, Number 1, Winter 2007, pp. 110—115
• "Threnody for Henry", Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University
• "Joyce", North Dakota Quarterly, Volume 75 Number 1, Winter 2008
• "Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano", North Dakota Quarterly, Volume 75.1, Winter 2008ISSN: 0029-277X

Anthologies

• (editors Mark Helprin, Shannon Ravenel)
• (editor Mark David Jauss)

Criticism

• Robert Lacy, (Sept 28, 1997), In short, `The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud'., Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), 14F

• Loft McNight Fellowship, Minnesota, 1984
• Midwest Voices fiction competition, Poets & Writers
• Minnesota Book Awards Past Finalists and Winners - 1998