Bernard Cooper, visiting professor in the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, will read from his work at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.
Cooper has written two collections of memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, as well as a novel, A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. His work has appeared in Story, Ploughshares, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine. His work has been included in five volumes of The Best American Essays, and in anthologies such as The Oxford Book of Literature on Aging, and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles. He is completing a collection of essays titled My Avant-Garde Education due to be published in 2015.
For the fifth year in a row, the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program has been ranked the top nonfiction program in the country by Poets & Writers.
Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work has been read on This American Life and Selected Shorts from Symphonyspace. For many years, Cooper was the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine. He has taught at Antioch/Los Angeles and at the UCLA Writers’ Program. He is a core faculty member in the MFA Writing Program at Bennington College and also teaches in the Masters of Professional Writing program at USC.
The Nonfiction Writing Program is part of the Department of English in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights in advance at 319-337-2681.
For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the Arts Iowa website.