News Of The Week and Desiree Cooper’s “Know The Mother”

Author/Journalist Des Cooper Talks About Her Book of Flash Fiction, “Know the Mother”

Des Cooper

“We’re all looking north, like where can we run?” 

“I’ve always, since I was a little girl, wanted to write novels.” “I discovered… I really have a muscle for compressed fiction.”

“I knew when I wrote that story that I wanted to keep exploring that topic.”

Second Sleep — likes that it crosses into poetry.

Author and journalist Desiree Cooper explores “flash fiction” in her new book, “Know The Mother.” The book features 31 stories looking into the lives of women. Cooper joins host Stephen Henderson on Detroit Today to talk about her book, the art of story writing, and what she thinks of the presidential election this year.

  • “Love” in Politics: “I think Barack Obama has ruined politics in a germaine way,” says Cooper. She says because President Obama has inspired “love” for politicians, all future candidates need to transmit the same feeling to voters that Obama inspired in 2008.
  • Elections: Desiree thinks that African-Americans are going to be “super motivated” to vote in the general elections. “I think they’ll vote in their self-interest, and they’ll either be motivated by fear, or love,” Cooper says
  • Flash Fiction: Cooper calls the book a collection of “flash fiction”. The format allowed Cooper to write in chunks rather than a full length novel. “I really have a muscle for compressing stories into short spaces,” Cooper says.

To hear more of their conversation, click the link above.

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