| Deborah Copaken Kogan | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Deborah Elizabeth Copaken |
| Born | 1966 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Photography |
Deborah Copaken Kogan (born 1966) is an American author and photojournalist.
She was born Deborah Elizabeth Copaken[1] in Boston, the daughter of Marjorie Ann (née Schwartz) and Richard Daniel Copaken, who served as a White House Fellow for President Lyndon B. Johnson.[2][3][4] She grew up first in Adelphi, then Potomac, Maryland. Kogan graduated from Harvard University in 1988, then worked as a photojournalist based in Paris, France from 1988–1992, shooting assignments in Zimbabwe, Zurich, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Romania, the Soviet Union where she resided for most of 1991, and other places. In 1992, she moved to New York and worked for ABC, where she won an Emmy[5] for a story on the 1994 Amtrak Train crash, and then at NBC during the next several years. She began writing full time in 1998.
Kogan has written a bestselling memoir entitled Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War. It was first published in 2001. At one point, writer Darren Star adapted the book into a screenplay for DreamWorks.[6] It was then picked up by producer Anthony Bregman[7] (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind[8]) and director José Padhila[9] (Elite Squad),[10] followed by Evan Shapiro at the Sundance Channel.
She is also a novelist, essayist and performer. Her novel Between Here and April[11] was published in 2008 and won the November Elle Reader's Prize,[12] and her book of comic essays, Hell is Other Parents,[13] some of which appeared in the New Yorker[14] and the New York Times,[15] was published in August 2009. Her second novel, The Red Book, will be published by Hyperion/VOICE in April 2012. She has performed and curated live storytelling for The Moth;[16] she has also performed on the New York stage with Afterbirth,[17] the Six Word Memoir series, and at a 20th anniversary tribute to Anita Hill in 2011, curated by playwright Eve Ensler, for whom she also penned a monologue that was performed in Ensler's 2006 production, "Until the Violence Stops."
As a teenager, she had a small speaking role in the film Key Exchange[18] and was an occasional columnist for Seventeen magazine.
Kogan married Paul Kogan in 1993. The couple have three children. Jacob, an actor who played the title role in the 2007 film Joshua and Young Spock in JJ Abrams' 2009 Star Trek, Sasha, and Leo.[19]