Patty Friedmann ’68 is the author of six darkly comic literary novels set in New Orleans: The Exact Image of Mother, Eleanor Rushing, Odds, Secondhand Smoke, Side Effects, and A Little Bit Ruined as well as the humor book, Too Smart to Be Rich. Her titles have been selected as top picks by Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Book Sense 76. She has published reviews, essays, and short stories in Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Oxford American, Speakeasy, Horn Gallery, Short Story, LA LIT, Brightleaf, New Orleans Review, The Times-Picayune, and in the anthologies The Great New American Writers Cookbook, Above Ground, Christmas Stories from Louisiana, My New Orleans, New Orleans Noir, and Life in the Wake. She lives in New Orleans.