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"Mary Rechner's astounding, perfectly wrought stories of what it means to be a modern woman are witty, provocative, and honest enough to make you gasp. She's the Mary Gaitskill of motherhood." --Karen Karbo, author of The Gospel Accroding to Coco Chanel

A woman sewing a dress for her anniversary night out finds herself presiding over her young daughters as they cut apart their own clothes. A four year old boy going earnestly about the business of being a four year old boy is perplexed as to why his behavior seems to have dramatic effects on his mother. An elementary school volunteer learns about a role-playing card game from a young boy, and then sees the roles play out in her own home.

College friends and couples reunite for a drink, and find that although their campus couplings are in the past, their sexual competitions are still very much present.

Over the course of these nine stories, Mary Rechner brings a frank, humorous, and ultimately illuminating narrative voice to the subjects of sex, marriage, family, and work. Her characters strain against expected behaviors and received opinions about emotional life: a grieving woman considers pursuing her dead lover's twin, a master gardener envies the freedom of her widowed friend, a poet considers which of her pieces will work best when read in a strip club, and a patient in the dentist's chair finds her appointment her best chance to reflect on her otherwise hectic life.

Nominated for awards and the recipient of fellowships from organizations on both sides of the country, Mary Rechner's prose leavens moments of despair with moments of humor, and recognizes the knotted relationship between pleasure and pain. The patient, uncompromising work of a writer who has carefully observed the moments of possibility and peril that appear--and that we often deliberately seek--in the journey from youth to adulthood, Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women is a debut collection that signals the arrival of a significant new voice in contemporary fiction.

"With an agile style and arresting prose, Mary Rechner introduces us to complicated women, indeed. Whether mothers, daughters, or friends, the protagonists in her stories are wholly rendered and vibrantly real. Rechner writes with startling acuity, delving into singular lives with the full-hearted knowledge that to love means to be besieged, to love means to suffer, but that, in the end, to love is the only way to truly be alive." --Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This

"Funny, bold, and somewhat rueful, Rechner is a plucky, mischievous writer." --Brad Kessler, author of Birds in Fall

• BIO
• EVENTS
• REVIEWS

Mary Rechner's fiction has appeared in publications including Kenyon Review, Washington Square, Propeller Quarterly, and Oregon Literary Review. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Believer and The Oregonian. She is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and in 2006, her story "Hot Springs" was printed as a limited edition letterpress chapbook by Cloverfield Press.

She is also the director of Portland's "Writers in the Schools" program, which places poets, fiction writers, essayists, graphic novelists, and playwrights into Portland area high schools, where they facilitate exercises and instruction in creative writing. Last year, the program sponsored writing workshops in 60 classrooms and served more than 2,000 students.

Mary Rechner grew up on Long Island, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

On Saturday, October 9, Mary will read from Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women at Wordstock, Portland's premier books festival. She will read with David Vann at 1:00 pm on the OEA Stage. At 4:00 pm on the McMenamin's Stage, she will be a panel member on the topic "The State of the Short Story." Wordstock features ten author stages, a book fair with over 150 exhibitors, a special children's area and children's literature stage, and more. Wordstock 2010 will be held at the Oregon Convention Center, 777 N Martin Luther King Blvd, Portland, Oregon.

On Tuesday, November 2, Mary will read at Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, Oregon.

On Sunday, November 14, stories from Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women will be performed by professional actors as part of Sally Shore's New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. The event will be held at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Boulevard. Mary will sign books after the performance.

On Sunday, November 21, Mary will read at Powell's City of Books on Burnside Avenue in Portland, Oregon.

Further information or gossip can be found on our News page.

"A tight, incisive and darkly funny series of vignettes about mothers, wives and the people who unwittingly become them." --Kelly Clarke, Willamette Week. [Read the full review here.]

Rose City Reader, looking over her review copy: "It has moved from my mailbox to the top of my nightstand TBR-immediately stack because it is irresistible. Not only is the cover so vintage sassy, it is also a beautifully-made book, with thick, rough-cut pages and French flaps. French flaps. That is a trend in book binding that I support wholeheartedly."