Ms. Cooley grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her book Breach, is a collection of poems about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast. Her fourth book of poems, Milk Dress is co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award. She has published four books of poetry and a novel. She received her BA from Brown University, her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her PhD in American Literature and Women’s Studies from Emory University. Her awards include The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for her first book, Resurrection , a Discovery/ The Nation Award, an NEA, a Creative Artists fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is currently completing a new collection of poems, Artificial Curiosities and a cross genre project, The Flood Notebooks . She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Queens College-City University of New York where she directs the new MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.
Milk Dress (Alice James Books, 2010)
Breach (Louisiana State University Press, 2010)
The Afflicted Girls (Louisiana State University Press, 2001)
Resurrection (Louisiana State University Press, 1996)