My guest today is Desiree Cooper, the 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow. Cooper is a former attorney. She is also a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and much-beloved community activist. Originally from Virginia, she currently lives in Virginia. BUT she lived in Detroit for decades and will always be an honorary Detroiter!

She is much beloved here, and I am honored to call her my friend.

Today’s podcast includes four stories from her award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 2023 Flash Fiction America, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other publications.

This podcast was recorded at Book Suey, a fabulous cooperatively owned bookstore in Hamtramck, Michigan. My fellow moderator was member-owner Eli Sparkman.

Eli is the Detroit Program and Volunteer Coordinator for 826michigan, a youth writing organization. He is a Teaching Artist for The Moth and a Memoir Reader for Split Lip Magazine. He graduated from Northern Michigan University’s MFA program, where he was a Flash Fiction Editor for Passages North.

And many many thanks to Vincent James Perrone, who edited this audio podcast—the first one I’ve hosted with a live audience. Vincent is also a writer from Detroit. He’s the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic. He is currently based in Charlottesville, VA, where he is pursuing an MFA at the University of Virginia.

I hope you enjoy this episode and if you do, please consider joining me as a yearly member of the Substack and/or helping to sponsor LDAS with a small donation. I would love to produce more content, but I need funds to do that. LDAS is entirely listener-supported, which allows us the freedom to create content of our choosing, and I hope to keep it that way.

I appreciate your support.

And now for the show!