Visiting Writers Series to feature married award-winning writers

Northwest Missouri State University’s 2022-23 Visiting Writers Series continues Thursday, Oct. 27, with a night of readings by a Colorado-based couple.

The event featuring Matthew Cooperman and Aby Kaupang begins at 7 p.m. in the J.W. Jones Student Union Living Room. It is free and open to the public.

“A reading is a place where a new kind of community becomes a possibility, where we gift or direct our collective attention to someone else for a brief moment,” Dr. Daniel Biegelson, a senior instructor of English at Northwest, said. “We are each from a very particular context, a very particular place in time — and a reading expands you. Suddenly, you can find your own life illuminated, encounter possibilities you haven’t imagined or enter into the lifeworld of other people.”

Together, Cooperman and Kaupang wrote “NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified),” which chronicles the challenges and occasional triumphs of raising a child with autism.

Cooperman is the author of New Measure Prize winner “Spool” and the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize winner “Surge.” His other works include the image and text collaboration “Imago for the Fallen World,” “Still: Of the Earth as the Ark Which Does not Move” and “Daze.”

He has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and is the recipient of the Jovanovich Prize from the University of Colorado and the INTRO Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Utah Wilderness Society Prize and the O. Marvin Lewis Award from Weber Studies. He serves as a founding editor of Quarter After Eight and poetry editor for Colorado Review while teaching creative writing and literature at Colorado State University.

Kaupang is the author of “Radiant Tether,” “Disorder 299.00,” “Little ‘g’ God Grows Tired of Me,” “Absence is Such a Transparent House” and “Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable.”

The poet laureate of Fort Collins, Colorado, from 2015 to 2017, her poems have appeared in The Seattle Review, FENCE, La Petite Zine, Dusie, Verse and Denver Quarterly. She has master’s degrees in creative writing and occupational therapy.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to enrich Northwest’s educational mission while promoting the values of community, civil discourse and self-expression. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, Green Tower Press and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing sponsor the series.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Daniel Biegelson, the series director and a senior instructor of English, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 666.562.1266.