Arlene Heyman’s SCARY OLD SEX (Blooms­bury) would be a dra­mat­ic debut col­lec­tion com­ing from any­one. What makes this col­lec­tion even more notable is that it is writ­ten by a prac­tic­ing Man­hat­tan psychiatrist/​psychoanalyst in her sev­en­ties. Hey­man, the recip­i­ent of Ful­bright, Woodrow Wil­son, Rock­e­feller, and Robert Wood John­son fel­low­ships, has craft­ed these no-holds-barred sto­ries about inti­ma­cy and mar­ried love and extra-mar­i­tal affairs over many years.Heyman worked on her writ­ing as an under­grad­u­ate at Ben­ning­ton Col­lege, where she stud­ied with Bernard Mala­mud. She earned an M.F.A. at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lish­ing short sto­ries, teach­ing lit­er­a­ture. Hey­man has been pub­lished in the New Amer­i­can Review , in Epoch where she won a novel­la con­test, and has been list­ed twice in the hon­or rolls of The Best Amer­i­can Short Stories.