Robert Cooperman

Robert Cooperman was born and bred in Brooklyn, but has spent a lot of time writing about the Old West, partly because of a childhood love of horse operas and partly for having moved to Denver to study at the University of Denver's Creative Writing Program, which is also where he met his wife, Beth, whose reaction to a poem he submitted for criticism was "Oh dear, this is dreadful." Suffice to say it was love at second sight. Cooperman has published eight collections. IN THE COLORADO GOLD FEVER MOUNTAINS (a triogy depicting the life and death of a boomtown, the hanging of a soiled dove for murder, and the fictionalized travels of an Englishwoman with a Western badnan in the Rockies) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000. THE WIDOW'S BURDEN (a tale ripped from the headlines but transposed to the time of the Colorado Territory) was runner-up for the WILLA Literary Award from Women Writing the West. Another tale of the Old West is his recent collection, A KILLING FEVER , which fictionalizes the horrific adbuction, rape, murder, and attempted murder of two young girls in Casper, Wyoming, but which is also set in the time of the Colorado Territory. Cooperman's latest collection is A TINY SHIP UPON THE SEA, which was inspired by an old Irish folksong protesting the British practice of pressing Irishmen into service in the British navy and army. Forthcoming from Main Street Rag is Cooperman's ninth collection, THE WORDS WE USED, a departure for him, in that these are lyrical poems based on the Yiddish words and phrases he heard growing up. A tenth collection, THE RANCH WIFE, is a contemporary Western, set in a fictional ranching community on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, and is due out in 2010. Cooperman is presently working on a sequel to A TINY SHIP UPON THE SEA and a collection inspired by the folksong, "The Lily of the West."