Patrick Cottrell is the winner of a Whiting Award in fiction in 2018 and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 2017. Cottrell is currently an assistant professor at the University of Denver.
Five years after the death of his youngest brother, Dan Moran is now the published trans author of the autofictional novel Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. He is teaching fiction in Brooklyn and working on his next book when a mysterious envelope arrives for him in the mail. Addressed to the wrong name, it includes a childhood photo of his deceased brother. Against his better judgment, Dan returns to his childhood home on the eve of his brother’s memorial dinner. His estranged family is surprised to see him, but he ignores them. He searches for a constellation of unidentified women who may have been involved with his brother, all while being mistaken for another man. He hopes his investigation will reveal exactly who he was to his brother, but what he discovers is the irrevocable distance between who we are and how we are perceived.