Patrick Cottrell (born Patty Yumi Cottrell, 1981) is an American writer. He is the author of '' Sorry to Disrupt the Peace'' and the winner of a 2018

Whiting Award The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, ...

. He teaches at the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1864, it has an enrollment of approximately 5,700 undergraduate students and 7,200 graduate students. It is classified among "R1: D ...

Biography

Cottrell was born in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

in 1981 and was adopted, along with two biologically unrelated younger Korean boys, into a family from the

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It ...

. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Cottrell started his first novel in his early thirties. In 2012 he received his M.F.A. from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

. After moving from New York to Los Angeles, he completed the novel in 2016. The resulting book, a "stylized contemporary noir" titled '' Sorry to Disrupt the Peace'', was published by

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American nonprofit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. The executive director is Amanda Uhle. McSweeney's first publication was the literary journal'' Timothy McSw ...

in 2017. Cottrell has called the book "an anti-memoir". It tells the story of Helen, a woman adopted from Korea at a young age, who returns to her adoptive parents' home in Milwaukee after her adoptive brother's suicide. Writing for ''

The Rumpus ''The Rumpus'' is an online literary magazine founded by Stephen Elliott (author), Stephen Elliott, and launched on January 20, 2009. The site features interviews, book reviews, essays, comics, and critiques of creative culture as well as origi ...

'', Liza St. James called the book "marvelously interior" and praised the writing as "discursive and associative and gripping all at once". ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' called the book "electrifying in its freshness" and the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

'' called it "a strange and lovely thing". ''Sorry to Disrupt the Peace'' won a National Gold Medal from the

Independent Publisher Book Awards The Independent Publisher Book Awards, also styled as the IPPY Awards, are a set of annual literary awards for independently published books. They are the longest-running unaffiliated contest open exclusively to independent presses. The IPPY Aw ...

for Best First Book in the Fiction category. It also won Barnes & Noble’s 2017 Discover Award for Fiction. In 2018 Cottrell received the

in fiction, which is given to promising writers in the early stages of their careers. The selection committee said that his writing "opens up fresh lines of questioning in the old interrogations of identity". Cottrell came out as

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

in 2021.

Recognition

*2017: Barnes & Noble Discover Award *2017: National Gold Medal from the

for Best First Book – Fiction *2018:

Bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cottrell, Patrick 1981 births Living people 21st-century American novelists School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni American writers of Korean descent South Korean emigrants to the United States South Korean adoptees Writers from Milwaukee American male novelists 21st-century male writers American transgender writers Transgender male writers American LGBTQ people of Asian descent 21st-century American male writers