Michael Copperman

About Me

I teach writing to low-income, at-risk students of color at the University of Oregon, where I received my MFA in fiction in 2006. I also have a B.A. in English with Creative Writing from Stanford, where I was a Presidential Scholar. My nonfiction has appeared in The Oxford American, GOOD, Guernica, Anderbo, Brevity, The Best Creative Nonfiction (Norton Anthology, vol. III), Teachers and Writers, Stanford Magazine, Intermat, The Oregonian, The Register-Guard, and The Eugene Weekly, and is forthcoming from Post Road and Copper Nickel. I am also the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowship. My fiction has been published in The Arkansas Review, Thirdreader, and 34th Parallel, and is forthcoming from Unsaid and Copper Nickel. My story “Harm,” was recently named a runner-up for the Sean O’Faolain Prize, and will appear in the Munster Literature Centre’s magazine Southword.

From 2002-04, I taught fourth grade in the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America. I am currently trying to agent a novel that concerns that experience.

Why do you write?

Writing is how I understand myself and others.

Any favorite authors? Books?

I love Andre Dubus, Isaac Babel, Flannery O'Connor, Bernard Malamud, Chekhov, Fitzgerald in Gatsby and not in his short stories, Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore and early Ann Beattie, Carver, James Baldwin, Edward P. Jones in "Lost in the City," and a lot else that's probably more telling but reflects badly on my taste.