Rumpus, The Gettysburg Review, StoryQuarterly, The Antioch Review and elsewhere, and she has been the recipient of many awards including a 2022 award from December magazine, the Crazyhorse National Fiction Prize, and four Illinois Arts Council Awards, as well as two Notable Essay citations from Best American Essays. She taught creative writing at Columbia College Chicago for more than thirty years and now works as a writer and an author consultant.
At Electric Lit Cohen tagged seven books that "exemplify what it means for complex characters to be defined by their cravings, and how their yearnings help establish relatable plots for all of us who have ever intensely wanted something." One title on the list:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle ZevinRead about the other entries on the list.
Like the character in [R.F. Kuang's] Yellowface, the three main characters here want fame and fortune, but that’s secondary. This novel is a multi-layered odyssey that follows the journey of the two primary characters,Sadie and Sam, from when they meet as children in a hospital to adulthood. At first they desire friendship and mastering video games. As they grow and mature, so do their cravings; they want to design games so compelling that praise and wealth comes to them by virtue of their talent, inventiveness, and vision. Unlike June in Yellowface, they want well-earned recognition. The book is a study in story-telling and in the making of art. Until reading it, I never realized how much writers of serious literature and the best game designers have in common. Both are driven by a vision that they won’t fully understand until they’ve finished creating it. The descriptions of the games they invent are like miniature novels within the novel. The multitude of desires displayed by these talented and well-drawn characters keep readers absorbed during the entire 400-plus page book that spans a period of 30 years.
--Marshal Zeringue
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