Know the Mother is an exploration of race, gender and class through layered, complex storytelling. Author Desiree Cooper’s collection of flash fiction—which often walks the line between poetry and prose—is a searing interrogation of the mother archetype. In her interactive reading, Cooper will challenge the audience to explore sexism as it is lived. Cooper is a former attorney and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist whose fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010 and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She is a 2013 and 2015 Kimbilio Fellow, a national residency for African American fiction writers.  

Cosponsored by the Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (RIGS) Initiative, the Creative Writing Program’s Edelstein-Keller Endowment, and the Departments of Communication Studies and the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies