Poetry Event! The Cooley Conspiracy

Tulane Professor Poet Peter Cooley and his daughter, Poet Nicole Cooley, professor at Queens College-City University of New York, will read from and sign copies of their work. This event is free of charge and is open to the public.

Nicole Cooley, PhD

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. She received her BA from Brown University, her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her PhD from Emory University.

Her first book of poetry, Resurrection, was chosen by Cynthia Macdonald to receive the 1995 Walt Whitman. Her second book of poetry, The Afflicted Girls, about the Salem witch trials of 1692, was chosen as one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. She is also the author of the novel Judy Garland, Ginger Love. Her third book of poetry is Breach, a collection of poems about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast.

About Cooley, Cynthia Macdonald has said, "Nicole Cooley speaks in a voice unmistakably her own, a voice which need not demand attention because its quiet confidence is so compelling."

Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Field, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and The Nation. She was awarded a "Discovery"/The Nation Award for her poetry in 1994, and in 1996 she received a fiction grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

She is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Queens College—City University of New York, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing and literary translation.

Peter Cooley, PhD

Professor Cooley received a B.A. in Humanities from Shimer College, an M.A. in Art and Literature from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Modern Letters from the University of Iowa, where he was a student in the Writers' Workshop and submitted a book of his own poetry as his dissertation.

Cooley taught at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay before coming to Tulane. He has taught in the M.F.A. programs at Warren Wilson College, Vermont College, Western Michigan University in Prague, and the University of New Orleans in Montpellier and Madrid. He has also taught creative writing workshops in a mental hospital, a prison, in pre-schools, grade schools, high schools, and to the elderly, the socially disadvantaged, and the illiterate.

Cooley's nine books of poetry are The Company of Strangers, The Room Where Summer Ends, Nightseasons, The Van Gogh Notebook, The Astonished Hours, Sacred Conversations, A Place Made of Starlight, Divine Margins, and Night Bus to the Afterlife. His poems have appeared in more than 700 magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Southern Review, and in more than 100 anthologies. His work is in three editions of The Best American Poetry.

Cooley is Director of Creative Writing, Professor of English, and Senior Mellon Professor in the Humanities.