Rachel Pastan's novel Alena was named an Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of two other novels, Lady of the Snakes and This Side of Married, which was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her short fiction has been published in the Georgia Review, the Threepenny Review, Mademoiselle, Prairie Schooner, and many other places. In 2014 she edited Seven Writers, a chapbook of writing inspired by exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, where she served as editor-at-large for several years and developed the popular blog Miranda. Pastan grew up in suburban Maryland, the daughter of a molecular geneticist and a poet, and attended Harvard College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writers Seminar MFA program. Up until recently, she taught writing at Swarthmore College and now is the editor of the Swathmorean, a small town newspaper.
