Patty Friedmann

Patty Friedmann's latest work is a collection of her finest short stories, Where Do They All Come From? published by Sartoris Literary. Her just-published novel is An Organized Panic, another of her edgy, darkly humorous, New Orleans-set literary works, this one from Old Stone Press.

In keeping with her no-holds-barred voice, she had recently re-released her 1987 humor book, Too Smart to Be Rich, as a "gift" to those with similar political views--labeling it Too Rich to Be Smart.

She is the author of the perennial Amazon e-bestseller Too Jewish, and an earlier novel published by Viking Penguin, The Exact Image of Mother, was re-released as its sequel Too Jewish: the Next Generation, both from booksBnimble.

Now the new Do Not Open for Fifty Years appears in both electronic and print format as the third in the Too Jewish trilogy from BBN. BBN has reissued as e-books several Friedmann novels that had appeared in print: Pick-Up Line (formerly Side Effects from Counterpoint) which almost was lost in 2006 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; A Little Bit Ruined (Counterpoint); Secondhand Smoke, Eleanor Rushing, Odds (all Counterpoint); and Too Smart to Be Rich, humor (New Chapter Press).Right after Katrina she wrote two YA novels No Takebacks and Taken Away (TSP).

In 2001-2002, she was writer-in-residence at Tulane University. Patty has reviewed for Publishers Weekly, Brightleaf, Short Story, and the Times-Picayune; her short stories have appeared in Horn Gallery, Short Story, LaLit, Xavier Review, and elsewhere; and she has had essays in Oxford American, Speakeasy, and New Orleans Review. Stage productions under the direction of Carl Walker are The Accidental Jew and Lovely Rita. She was included in The Great American Writers Cookbook and Christmas Stories from Louisiana in 2003, as well as in the collections My New Orleans in 2005, Intersections in 2006, Life in the Wake and New Orleans Noir in 2007, and Something in the Water in 2011.

The manuscript of An Organized Panic took second place out of 406 entries in the novel category of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom literary competition in 2012. In 2009 Oxford American included Secondhand Smoke with Gone With the Wind, Deliverance, and A Lesson Before Dying as one of the 30 Most Underrated Southern Books.

In late 2017, she was given the distinguished ALIHOT (A Legend In His/Her Own Time) medal at the annual Faulkner Conference.

Patty is the mother of Esme Roberson and Werner Friedmann II and the grandmother of Summer Roberson and Kennedy and Carmine Friedmann