While the editors of "Across the Disciplines" were working at the Michigan State University (MSU) Writing Center in 2011, they began focusing on the issues of graduate writing support through their involvement with the graduate writing groups hosted through the MSU Writing Center, conducting research on the benefits of such groups. When the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department began an initiative to create research clusters that bring faculty, staff, and students together to engage in conducting professional academic research and developing professional publications, the editors decided that a research cluster focusing on graduate writing would be ideal. They participated in this Graduate Writing Research Cluster for the two years that they were all still at MSU, and this special issue is a product of that participation. This paper provides a brief overview of problems and concerns within graduate writing education, which provide support for why research in this area is so important. This special issue, "Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines," is designed to present just a few ways graduate writing is being researched and discussed both across and within disciplines.