Patrick Cottrell

Patrick Cottrell joins us to talk about his new book, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit — along with humor, teaching, reading and more on #pouredover Listen now wherever you get your podcasts

Next Monday, May 18! We welcome Patrick Cottrell to celebrate his novel, AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT! Cottrell will be joined in-conversation by SF’s own Rita Bullwinkel and R.O. Kwon. Free to attend, please RSVP at the link in our bio or at greenapplebooks.com/events. See you then! 🍎About Afternoon Hours of a Hermit🍎 A darkly funny and profoundly moving new novel by award-winning author Patrick Cottrell. 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–a psychological thriller–when a mysterious envelope arrives for him in the mail. Addressed to the wrong name, it includes a childhood photo of his deceased brother. But who would send such a thing, and why? 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 drives around in his brother’s Honda Accord, believing he is a detective. 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 in a series of unsettling and destabilizing encounters, what he discovers is the irrevocable distance between who we are and how we are perceived. Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is Patrick Cottrell’s long-awaited second novel—an existential noir, an absurd comedy, a complex character study, and a heartbreaking inquiry into the paradox of identity, memory, and the very enterprise of writing fiction. . . . . . . [ID: Graphic reads “Patrick Cottrell presented by Green Apple Books with Rita Bullwinkel and R.O. Kwon. Monday, May 18. 7pm. 1231 9th Ave. Free, RSVP at the link in Bio.” The graphic features authour photos of Cottrell, Bullwinkel, and Kwon in round frames, as well as the cover Cottrell’s novel Afternoon Hours of the Hermit. The cover image is a red apple made of a fingerprint.]

everyone knows there are only a handful of full-time book critics these days so it's an honor when anyone chooses to sit down and write a review. i've admired, taught, and been in dialogue with @vikhinao 's work for almost a decade. so thankful for her WILD, creative, and generous review which she shared on her substack (link in stories). please subscribe to hers! if you want a sense of what the sentences are like in HERMIT, vi includes a long list of her favorites

A few weeks ago I talked with Halle Butler on the phone about my new book for Interview Magazine. Halle asked me some hard-hitting questions about psychological thrillers, humor, and reinvention. Halle's book Banal Nightmare was inspiring for me especially the way she depicts alienation and feeling adrift in the Midwest #afternoonhoursofahermit

i truly struggle with posting about my book/myself and i will stop soon. but i would like to share some excerpts from a notebook i kept as i was working on __afternoon hours of a hermit __ a few years ago. i had writer's block for a long time and felt a lot of doubt. i kept this writing log to chart what was going on as i started writing again and to encourage myself. thanks to @parisreview for sharing this and tarpley hitt for her help.

Swipe to listen to @ileosheng read an excerpt from @patrickmcottrell ’s darkly funny and profoundly moving new novel, AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT! Leo Sheng is the reader for the audiobook, which is available now! 🎧

Introducing AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT, the much-anticipated second novel from Patrick Cottrell, publishing in the UK and Europe on 22 September 2026. When Korean adoptee Dan Moran receives a photo of his deceased brother in the mail, the mysterious letter – addressed to his deadname – drags him back to Milwaukee’s airless suburbs. There, armed with an eye for inquiry and his favourite existential turtleneck, Dan navigates estrangement and mistaken identity, urgently trying to decode the three names his brother left scrawled in marker on his fingertips. AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT is a heartbreaking and Bernhardian investigation into memory, identity, and the act of writing itself. Preorder your copy now via @bookshop_org_uk @foylesforbooks @waterstones @blackwellbooks or at your local independent. #afternoonhoursofahermit #patrickcottrell #bookstagram #lgbtqfiction #independentpublishing

i am very surprised and heartened by this long, searching, inquisitive, and insightful review by one of my literary heroes @debolinunferth . i'm aware my book is not easy to talk about & some people might think i have simply rewritten my first book for no reason. i'm glad her review frames this question within a lineage of writers who circle around and retrace their primary obsessions. is a character who possibly transitions between books a revision? it's an honor to have a writer i respect read my first and second books as part of a larger project...especially at a time when there are almost no book reviews and five critics #afternoonhoursofahermit

it was such a delight to have a long conversation with @literaryamy whose own work on exploring grief and trauma is exemplary. we talked on zoom for an hour. here is our unedited conversation @the_rumpus . thank you, amy, for your close reading of my book

“A rain-soaked neo-noir and a comedy of manners, a philosophical disquisition, and a wrenching exploration of grief, Patrick Cottrell’s AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT is the work of an extraordinarily gifted writer. It is one of the most singular and thrilling novels I have read in years.” —@_katiekitamura , author of AUDITION, shortlisted for the Booker Prize It’s publication day for @patrickmcottrell ’s AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT! 🎉 Darkly funny and profoundly moving, Cottrell’s long-awaited second novel is an existential noir, an absurd comedy, a complex character study, and a heartbreaking inquiry into the paradox of identity, memory, and the very enterprise of writing fiction. Now available wherever you buy books!

so good to see @amina_memory in LA. writing a book is nearly impossible to do in complete isolation. amina and many other friends encouraged me to write afternoon hours of a hermit. i'm so thankful for them. thanks also to deb who took a chance on this weird book. there's an excerpt up on bomb magazine today if you want to take a look!

i spoke with @patrickmcottrell about the “eye of inquiry,” interrogating grief, and of course, puzzles for his novel, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit🕵🏻🧩 full interview up on the @zona.motel stack 🐐