About the Author

K. L. Cook is the author of three award-winning books of fiction.  His most recent book, Love Songs for the Quarantined (Willow Springs Editions 2011), a collection of thematically linked stories, won The Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. His novel, The Girl from Charnelle (William Morrow 2006/Harper Perennial 2007), won The Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction and was named a Southwest Book of the Year and an Editor’s Choice selection from the Historical Novel Society, among other honors.  Cook’s first book, Last Call (Nebraska 2004), a short story cycle chronicling three decades in the lives of a West Texas family, won the inaugural Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.

His stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, including Glimmer Train, One Story, Poets & Writers, Prairie Schooner, Threepenny Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Brevity, The Louisville Review, Shenandoah, Witness, American Short Fiction, Arts & Letters, Post Road, Colorado Review, Puerto del Sol, and Harvard Review.

His work has also been anthologized in Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, Now Write: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, When I Was a Loser: Essays on (Barely) Surviving High School, and Teachable Moments: Essays on Experiential Education.

He teaches creative writing and literature at Prescott College, where he has served as the Coordinator of the Arts & Letters Program and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.  Since 2004, he has been a member of the graduate faculty of Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.

He has also taught, as a visiting writer, at St. Lawrence University, College of Charleston, University of Oklahoma’s OSLEP Program, and Our Lady of the Lake University.  He regularly gives readings, workshops, lectures, and seminars at colleges, universities, and literary organizations around the country and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes and from 2009-2011 was a judge for The Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.

Born and raised in Texas, he now lives with his wife, writer and director Charissa Menefee, and their four children, in Prescott, Arizona.

For more information on Spalding University or Prescott College, click on the images below: