Desiree Cooper - Writer and Journalist

About this episode

The episode features a conversation with writer and journalist Desiree Cooper about her work and the intersections of gender and race.

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods. Today's conversation is with Desiree Cooper, a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, former attorney, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors . Her work, which often explores the intersection between gender and race, has appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus , River Teeth , and noted in The Best American Essays 2019 . Cooper is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother . Her children’s picture book, Nothing Special , is a 2023 Paterson Prizewinner and one of the New York Public Library’s “10 Best Children’s Books of 2022.”

People in this episode

Hosts: Ashley Newby, John E. Drabinski

Guest: Desiree Cooper

Topics covered

• Black Studies
• journalism
• gender and race
• literature
• urban culture

Keywords

• Desiree Cooper
• Black Studies
• journalism
• gender
• race
• literature
• urban outdoors

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth

Books & works: Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors, Know the Mother, Nothing Special, The Best American Essays 2019

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• Skye Jackson - Writer and Poet · June 5, 2026 · 41 min
• Michele Prettyman - Department of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University · June 3, 2026 · 52 min
• Andrea J. Queeley - Departments of Anthropology and Africa and African Diaspora Studies, Florida International University · June 1, 2026 · 1h 6m