Deborah Copaken
Deborah Copaken | |
---|---|
Born |
Deborah Elizabeth Copaken March 11, 1966 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Known for | Arts and letters, photography |
Deborah Copaken (born March 11, 1966[1]) is an American author and photojournalist. The New York Times described her in 2000 as "a media powerbabe."[2]
Personal life
She was born Deborah Elizabeth Copaken[3] 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, she grew up in Maryland, first in Adelphi and then from 1970 in Potomac.[4][5][6][7] She attended Harvard University.
As an adult, Copaken has lived in Paris and Moscow before moving to New York in 1992.[7] She and former spouse Paul M. Kogan have three children, including actor Jacob Kogan.[8][9]
Career
Prior to beginning a writing career, Copaken was a television producer at ABC and NBC and a war photographer.[7][10][11] Her novel Between Here and April[12] was published in 2008 and won the November Elle Reader's Prize.[13] In 2009, she released a book of comic essays, Hell is Other Parents, some of which appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.[14][15]
In 2001, she published a memoir of her experiences in photojournalism, Shutterbabe.[10] Reviews were mixed. Publishers Weekly said that “Kogan's swiftly paced story easily holds the reader's interest as she moves from her carefree days as an aspiring photojournalist to the responsibilities and dilemmas facing a working mother” but that “although her publisher compares her to Christiane Amanpour, readers may find more similarities with Candace Bushnell.”[16] Calling Kogan “a brilliant, clear-headed writer,” Kirkus Reviews characterized the book as “lucid, sardonic, exciting, if more than slightly immature.”[17] Entertainment Weekly thought it “brassy and defiant” but “weakened by the 'babe' portions . . . which unravel into weary girl talk about Kogan’s hyper-driven sex life. Each chapter is, to start, named after a guy.”[18] Salon.com called Shutterbabe "a self-aggrandizing story of the lusts and yearnings of a bored, post-feminist bad girl with a hankering to ‘see war.’ Shutterbabe is not about war, nor is it about photojournalism. It’s about sex—or, rather, sex as sport, an integral part of boys-club culture that Kogan, a Harvard graduate, embraces as just as much her privilege as theirs.”[19] “There is no doubt Kogan has a gift as a storyteller,” wrote the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “She writes in great visual detail in a compelling manner. But she chooses to speak authoritatively about a subject she knows only superficially. Shutterbabe is a tawdry account of her sexcapades and shortcomings disguised as a photojournalist’s story."[20]
Her second novel, The Red Book, published by Hyperion/VOICE in April 2012, was a New York Times bestseller.[21] The book was longlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.[10][22] Writing in The Washington Post, Curtis Sittenfeld found the book “in equal measures clever and nauseating," adding, “Kogan’s writing is at its best enjoyably breezy but at its worst glib.” [23] Maclean's registered similar ambivalence: “From a promising start, the plot bogs down with excess characters, pat observations and cringe-inducing coincidences. … [A]s literate soap opera, The Red Book is entertaining, even if listening to Ivy League-educated women talk non-stop about motherhood and marriage can grate.”[24]
Copaken in 2013 wrote an essay for The Nation detailing sexism she has encountered and observed in her career. She wrote that she was forced to use the titles under which her earlier books appeared, and that she was raped on the eve of her graduation from college.[10][25][26][27]
She has done live storytelling for The Moth;[28] she has also performed on the New York stage with Afterbirth,[29] the Six Word Memoir series. In February 2015, following a hysterectomy, she conducted a performance piece titled "A Dear John Letter To My Uterus" at Joe's Pub in Manhattan.[30]
References
- ↑ Copaken, Deborah. "Facebook Fan page". Facebook. Retrieved January 10, 2015.
- ↑ Lee, Linda (2000-12-31). "A NIGHT OUT WITH - Deborah Copaken Kogan - A Saucy Matchmaker". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ "Engagements; Deborah E. Copaken, Paul M. Kogan". The New York Times. 1993-04-18. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20101125115501/http://kcjc.com/20081226792/obituaries/richard-d.-copaken.html. Archived from the original on November 25, 2010. Retrieved July 30, 2010. Missing or empty
|title=
(help) - ↑ "Richard Copaken Weds Marjorie Ann Schwartz". The New York Times. 1963-06-17.
- ↑
- 1 2 3 "Some Biographical Notes". deborahcopakenkogan.com. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Rosenblum, Constance (28 January 2010). "Tea and Uncertainty for a Busy Family". The New York Times.
- ↑ Copaken, Deborah (2014-12-12). "What's in a Name, and How Do I Change Mine in the Digital Age?". Cafe.com. Some Spider LLC. Retrieved 2015-01-10.
- 1 2 3 4 Clark, Nick (12 April 2013). "Women’s Prize for Fiction nominee Deborah Copaken Kogan lifts the lid on sexism in publishing and the arts". The Independent. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ "ENGAGEMENTS; Deborah E. Copaken, Paul M. Kogan". The New York Times. 18 April 1993.
- ↑ Deborah Copaken Kogan. "Between Here and April". Amazon.com. ISBN 9781565125629. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ Archived March 20, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Deborah Copaken Kogan (2007-03-05). "Stage Motherhood". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ "MODERN LOVE; La Vie en Rose, the Takeout Version". The New York Times. 2007-04-15. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
- ↑ https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-375-50364-1
- ↑ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/deborah-copaken-kogan/shutterbabe/
- ↑ http://ew.com/article/2001/01/26/book-review-shutterbabe/
- ↑ http://www.salon.com/2001/01/29/shutterbabe/
- ↑ http://old.post-gazette.com/books/reviews/20010513review769.asp
- ↑ "COMBINED PRINT & E-BOOK FICTION". The New York Times. 2012-04-22. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
- ↑ Lipman, Jennifer (18 April 2013). "Last woman standing as four fail to make shortlist". Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Sittenfeld, Curtis (2012-03-29). ""The Red Book," by Deborah Copaken Kogan - The Washington Post". Wapo.st. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-red-book-2/
- ↑ Kogan, Deborah Copaken (29 April 2013). "My So-Called 'Post-Feminist' Life in Arts and Letters". The Nation. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Stoeffel, Kat (11 April 2013). "Why Women's Books Have Terrible Titles". New York Magazine. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Dean, Michelle (17 April 2013). "How to Win at the Women's Memoir Game". New York Magazine. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ "The Moth Store — The Moth Store". Store.themoth.org. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ "Dani Klein Modisett, Writer, Producer, Actor, Teacher". Daniklein.blogspot.com. 2004-02-26. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
- ↑ Copaken, Deborah. "A Dear John Letter to My Uterus Scary Mommy". Themid.com. Retrieved 2016-02-07.