award winning novelist and story writer

The tranquil college town of Horace, Oregon, is disrupted when white students taunt a Black student in the high school library, sending unexpected ripples and reverberations through the community.

“The way Miriam Gershow weaves the individual stories of the characters together is brilliant… Closer was a wildly entertaining, if devastating, ride.” Book Trib.

“Closer echoes a time before the most hateful among us took the country’s reins, reckoning with the way everyone could hear what was coming, if they had only listened.” Necessary Fiction.

Ten Stories. Countless foibles. A wife begins communicating to her husband only in rebus puzzles. A new teacher confronts her strongest foes, the parents of a disruptive student. A woman shows up to her blind date in a Don’t Leave Me t-shirt.

“Miriam Gershow’s stories are scathing, meticulously detailed chronicles of relationships gone awry. Family, work, dating, friendship, riding the bus, nothing escapes the scrutiny of Gershow’s prose in this wide-reaching, highly inventive collection of stories that skewer social norms.” Judges, Oregon Book Awards

“Going Missing was the most interesting thing my brother had ever done”

“Deftly heartbreaking…unusually credible and precise.” The New York Times

“The Local News achieves two nearly impossible things: It’s a funny book about harrowing circumstances, and it’s a poignant book about high school. Gershow’s narrator, Lydia Pasternak, is droll, keen, and utterly engaging. I couldn’t put this novel down.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See