About the Author

MB Caschetta is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her novel Miracle Girls (Engine Books, 2014) won The 2015 USA Best Book Award for Literary Fiction, a Gold Medal in Spiritual Books from the Independent Publisher Awards (IPPYs), and an IndieFAB 2015 Book of the Year in the LGBT category. Miracle Girls was also a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and a People Magazine Pick-of-the-Week, where it was hailed as "darkly beautiful."

She is the recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship and the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. Ms. Magazine called her first book of stories Lucy on the West Coast (Alyson Books) "a spectacular collection." Her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Journal of Creative Non-Fiction, as well as in anthologies by The Feminist Press, The Other Press, St. Martin's, and Plume, among others.

Stories from Pretend I'm Your Friend have appeared in The Mississippi Review, The Red Rock Review, Thieves Jargon, Ecclectica, 3: AM Magazine, and Bloom, among other literary journals. Select stories have also been awarded The Seattle Fiction Review Prize (winner), The Mississippi Review Fiction Prize (runner-up), and The Iowa Review Fiction Prize (finalist).

MB lives in Massachusetts with her spouse and standard poodle and is currently working on a book about being disinherited.

Reviews

"An affecting collection..." --People "Caschetta's prose is simple and evocative--and as she skillfully weaves these individual lives together, she reveals a complex tapestry of human experience."
--Entertainment Weekly "Short stories that frequently touch on endings--of love, relationship bonds, even life itself--link back to one another in surprising ways in this collection...The confrontations and losses can be gutting, but the ways they tie to one another create a strengthened bond among the survivors; there's hope amid the ruins created here."
--Kirkus Reviews "This hilarious, touching and important collection reveals the raw, sometimes bitter truth that comes with endings." --Ashley Macey, Brit + Co "There are, I suppose, stories full of brilliance, hilarity, and longing--the stories in MB Caschetta's terrific Pretend I'm Your Friend are full of all these things--but I can't remember when I've read a collection so full of life. Actual life: the bad jokes, the astounding velocity, the sweetness and darkness. You will love the characters here the way you love your own family: complicatedly, with tenderness, understanding, and consternation. The only difference may be how willing--and eager--you are to introduce them to friends. Good heavens, this book is good."
--Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck "A book of youthful verve, humor, melancholy and desire. It confronts the central mysteries: sexual, familial, and spiritual, with elegance and aplomb."
--Carole Maso, author of Mother & Child


"An affecting collection..." --People "Caschetta's prose is simple and evocative--and as she skillfully weaves these individual lives together, she reveals a complex tapestry of human experience."
--Entertainment Weekly "Short stories that frequently touch on endings--of love, relationship bonds, even life itself--link back to one another in surprising ways in this collection...The confrontations and losses can be gutting, but the ways they tie to one another create a strengthened bond among the survivors; there's hope amid the ruins created here."
--Kirkus Reviews "This hilarious, touching and important collection reveals the raw, sometimes bitter truth that comes with endings." --Ashley Macey, Brit + Co "There are, I suppose, stories full of brilliance, hilarity, and longing--the stories in MB Caschetta's terrific Pretend I'm Your Friend are full of all these things--but I can't remember when I've read a collection so full of life. Actual life: the bad jokes, the astounding velocity, the sweetness and darkness. You will love the characters here the way you love your own family: complicatedly, with tenderness, understanding, and consternation. The only difference may be how willing--and eager--you are to introduce them to friends. Good heavens, this book is good."
--Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck "A book of youthful verve, humor, melancholy and desire. It confronts the central mysteries: sexual, familial, and spiritual, with elegance and aplomb."
--Carole Maso, author of Mother & Child