Let’s deconstruct a story! Today Desiree Cooper and I will be discussing the story “Night Coming” from her 2016 award-winning short story collection, Know the Mother.
In order to get the most out of our discussion, you might want to read the story first and then listen to our conversation afterward on Spotify.
Here’s a PDF of the story. (At the bottom of the page, you will find a link to purchase the book.)
Night Coming from KNOW THE MOTHER
Please enjoy our discussion here:
or directly on Spotify here.
Bio: Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, former attorney and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. Her debut collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, is a 2017 Michigan Notable Book that has won numerous awards, including 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other publications. Her essay, “We Have Lost Too Many Wigs,” was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2019. In 2018, she wrote, produced and co-directed “The Choice,” a short film about reproductive rights and recipient of a 2019 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Berlin Flash Film Festival, and Award of Merit from the Best Short Film Festival in Los Angeles. Cooper collaborated with the Dance Department at The College William & Mary to create a dance “Aloft” inspired by her feminist fiction which debuted in October, 2018. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for black poets, and has received residencies at Kimbilio and Ragdale.
PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE:
WSUP here
Bookshop here
Amazon here.
In Other News:
Zilka Joseph is offering manuscript consultations and private classes right now! Joseph is an Ann Arbor poet whose work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in POETRY, Poetry Daily, Mantis, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, among other places and whose first full-length collection of poems Sharp Blue Search of Flame was published by Wayne State University Press (2016) and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIE Book Awards, You can find out more information about her editing services here.
My new book I Have the Answer was named a Top Summer Indie Read by Kirkus Review!
If you have read the book and enjoyed it, I would truly appreciate a star rating on either Goodreads here or Amazon here. It only takes a minute and makes a big difference to authors like me.
If you are on Goodreads, please friend me so we can share our reading lists. I’m always looking for suggestions, but even more so during these isolating times…
See you in two weeks!