T Cooper
Cooper’s father, a songwriter, influenced Cooper to become a storyteller at a young age when he sang a song about an old abandoned locomotive. “I think that’s when I started realizing you could evoke emotions in other people—thrill them, sadden them, excite them, comfort them, etc.—just through words,” says Cooper. Lipshitz 6, or Two Angry Blondes, Cooper’s bestselling second novel, came out in hardcover in 2006, and was just released this spring in paperback. Cooper also co-edited a political anthology of fiction, which came out in fall of 2006, called A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing, with stories from queer authors including Kate Bornstein, Sarah Schulman, Felicia Luna Lemus, Alexander Chee, Valerie Miner and more. It was designed as a fiction writers’ response to the way history is being manipulated. “I think of myself as an observer,” says Cooper, “always taking note of what’s happening in the world around me, thinking of ways I might communicate it later.” –RD
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