About Myrmaid Press

Myrmaid Press is dedicated to keeping the work by, and in the spirit of Rochelle Ratner in print and available online. In addition to her already published fiction, poetry, criticism and non-fiction, there is an unpublished body of work that awaits careful reading. In our first offering, we bring four works that exist in hard copy with the permission of Coffee House Press, publishers of Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share. In addition, we are bringing out the never before published novel, Dear Diary, and her collection of short stories, New York Lonely. We hope in addition to Rochelle’s extensive body of work, to publish work by others that is similarly insightful, inventive, and humane.

Rochelle Ratner

Featured Books

A Hole in the Ocean

A Hole in the Ocean

by Sandy McIntosh

“These irresistibly amusing and engaging recollections of the author’s encounters with the great and near- great artists and poets who washed ashore in the Hamptons has a special charm, as our intrepid protagonist plays unofficial chauffeur, therapist, straight-man and witness, always with retrospective self-awareness, insight and bittersweet gratitude.”
— Phillip Lopate

My Chocolate Sarcophagus

by Claudia Carlson

“The twenty-three poems in Claudia Carlson’s Chocolate Sarcophagus combine raw courage and absolute beauty. Powerful, poignant, ecstatically lyrical, and b eautifully crafted, they present us with an unflinching contemplation of mortality that never descends into sentimentality. In these poems, Carlson brings us an important message from the edge of life.”
—Mary Mackey

Bobby's Girl

Bobby’s Girl

by Rochelle Ratner

[The heroine’s] fantasies are as vivid and colorful as the glossy teen-age-idol photos in her collection of magazines… Ms. Ratner’s faithfulness to her heroine’s narrowed vision leaves the reader with the sensation of mental illness, helplessly spinning to a stack of 45s.
— Jill McCorkle, The New York Times Book Review

New York Lonely

New York Lonely

by Rochelle Ratner

In her collection of short stories, New York Lonely, Rochelle Ratner renders lives in snapshots from a camera that captures the inner as well as outer detail. Here is the contextual mystery of Thomas Mann wed to Tillie Olson’s eye for the deep quotidian, and gender fantastically rendered by Margaret Atwood but mediated by the shadow weave of Steven King.
—Paul Pines

The Lions Share

The Lion’s Share

by Rochelle Ratner

“Dominating this story of a thirtysomething artist living in Manhattan is her struggle with healing the wounds left from being sexually abused as a child. The author explores themes dealing with censorship and the arts and the creative process. But primarily, Ratner chronicles the evolution of a contemporary, urban relationship–albeit quite an unusual one.”
–Alice Joyce, Booklist

Bearing Life

Bearing Life: Women’s Writing on Childlessness

by Rochelle Ratner

A wall of silence surrounds the experience of women who are childless, whether by choice or by circumstance. Bearing Life is the first anthology to marshal the power of literature to break this silence.