Rachel Pastan grew up in suburban Maryland and attended Harvard College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has published short stories in numerous magazines, including The Threepenny Review and Mademoiselle, and won various prizes for her short fiction. Pastan is the daughter of the poet, Linda Pastan, and wife of the stellar astronomer, David Cohen. She lives outside Philadelphia where, when she's not mulling over sentences, she is consumed by the problem of narrative.