Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, 2010 Story Collection by Mary Rechner, Becomes Fourth Northwest Collection Title
Propeller Books is pleased to announce a new addition to the Northwest Collection: Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner, with a foreword by Miriam Gershow. Publishing in May, the book is available for pre-order now at propellerbooks.com.
Over the course of these nine stories, Mary Rechner brings frank, humorous, and illuminating narrative voice to the subjects of sex, marriage, family, and work. 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 reads best in a strip club. Resisting expected behaviors and received opinions, these women fight to maintain their sense of self amid mounting personal and social pressure. Nominated for awards and the recipient of fellowships from organizations on both sides of the country, Rechner captures the journey of women who came of age at the end of the twentieth century and then tumbled headlong—in families, careers, and friendship—into a bewildering new era.
MARY RECHNER is the author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, named to the long list for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and the novella The Opposite of Wow published in the Hong Kong Review. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as New Letters, Harvard Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, and Washington Square. A recipient of fellowships from Literary Arts and the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Rechner taught fiction writing at Portland State University and the University of Portland, and now teaches media arts to high school students.
MIRIAM GERSHOW’S debut novel, The Local News (Spiegel & Grau), was hailed as “unusually credible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New York Times and was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and her stories have been listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories of The Best American Short Stories and appeared in the Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories. She teaches writing at the University of Oregon.
The Northwest Collection is a series of titles that represent the rich literary history of the Pacific Northwest, published in quality editions featuring introductions and insights from contemporary writers.
