Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women

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. Her criticism and essays have appeared in Litro, The Believer, Oregon Humanities, and the Oregonian. A recipient of fellowships from Literary Arts and the Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as residencies from Caldera and the Vermont Studio Center, 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, was hailed as "unusually credible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking" by The New York Times and was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. Her stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review, among other journals, and her creative nonfiction has been featured in journals including Salon and Craft Literary. 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 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories. She teaches writing at the University of Oregon.