Deborah Copaken

Deborah Copaken
Born Deborah Elizabeth Copaken
(1966-03-11) March 11, 1966
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Residence Inwood, Manhattan, NYC
Nationality American
Alma mater Harvard University
Subject Arts and letters, photography
Spouse Paul Kogan
(1993-divorced)
Children 3

Deborah Copaken (born March 11, 1966) is an American author and photojournalist. The New York Times described her in 2000 as "a media powerbabe."[1]

Personal life

She was born Deborah Elizabeth Copaken[2] in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Marjorie Ann (née Schwartz) and Richard Daniel Copaken. Her father was a White House Fellow and lawyer.[3] She grew up in Maryland, first in Adelphi, and then from 1970 in Potomac.[4] She has three siblings.[5]

Copaken attended Harvard University. During her senior year and for a while afterward, as she wrote in The New York Times, she "fell victim to a number of random assaults and muggings. A few were quite scary: a couple with guns, another with a knockout blow to the head, others with unwanted tongues shoved deep in the back of my throat."[6] Copaken has also recounted that she was raped on the night before her graduation.[7][8][9] In Slate.com, she wrote, "I was attacked multiple times in my early twenties."[10]

As an adult, Copaken has lived in Paris and Moscow before moving to New York City in 1992.[4] She and former spouse Paul Kogan have three children: son Jacob Kogan (born 1995), daughter Sasha Kogan (born 1997), and son Leo Kogan (born 2006). Jacob is an actor.[11][12]

Career

Prior to beginning a writing career, Copaken was a television producer at ABC and NBC and a war photographer.[4][8] Her novel Between Here and April was published in 2008 and won the November Elle Reader's Prize.[13] In 2009, she released a book of comic essays, Hell is Other Parents, some of which appeared in the New Yorker and The New York Times.[14][15] In 2001, she published a memoir of her experiences in photojournalism, Shutterbabe.[8] Her second novel, The Red Book, published by Hyperion/VOICE in April 2012, was a New York Times bestseller. The book was longlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.[8][16]

Inspired by the longlisting of her novel, Copaken in 2013 wrote an essay for The Nation detailing sexism she has encountered and observed in her career.[8][17][18]

She has performed and curated live storytelling for The Moth; she has also performed on the New York stage with Afterbirth,[19] the Six Word Memoir series. In 2014, it was reported that she was adapting Shutterbabe as a TV series for NBC.[20]

In February 2015, following a hysterectomy, she conducted a performance piece titled "A Dear John Letter To My Uterus" at Joe's Pub in Manhattan.[21] In November 2017 in Oprah.com, she published a 3,500-word account of her supracervical hysterectomy, adenomyosis and trachelectomy, and her subsequent recovery in Nepal.[22] In March 2018 in The Atlantic, writing in second-person narrative, she accused New York Observer editor Ken Kurson of sexually harassing her.[23] In July 2018 in The Atlantic, in an essay pertaining to Roe V. Wade, similarly conveyed in second-person narrative, she wrote that three of her five pregnancies were unplanned and that she had undergone two abortions.[24]

In September 2018 in The Atlantic, Copaken wrote that exactly 30 years after being raped at Harvard, she wrote to her assailant to remind him of the incident. Within half an hour, Copaken wrote, he apologized and "the trauma was gone."[25]

Works

  • Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War (2001), memoir
  • Between Here and April (2008), novel
  • Hell Is Other Parents: And Other Tales of Maternal Combustion (2009), essay
  • The Red Book (2012), novel
  • The ABCs of Adulthood: An Alphabet of Life Lessons (2016), nonfiction (illustrations by Copaken and Randy Polumbo)
  • The ABCs of Parenthood: An Alphabet of Parenting Advice (2017), nonfiction (illustration by Copaken and Randy Polumbo)

References

  1. ↑ Lee, Linda (December 31, 2000). "A Night Out with - Deborah Copaken Kogan - A Saucy Matchmaker". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ "Engagements; Deborah E. Copaken, Paul M. Kogan". The New York Times. April 18, 1993.
  3. ↑ "Richard Copaken Weds Marjorie Ann Schwartz". The New York Times. July 17, 1963.
  4. 1 2 3 "Deporah Copaken: Bio". Official website.
  5. ↑ "Obituaries: Richard D. Copaken". The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on November 25, 2010. Retrieved July 30, 2010.
  6. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (August 20, 2000). "Lives; King of the Mountain". The New York Times.
  7. ↑ Gezari, Vanessa (January 14, 2001). "In Her Sights: A Photojournalist's Passionate Memoir". Chicago Tribune.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Clark, Nick (April 12, 2013). "Women's Prize for Fiction nominee Deborah Copaken Kogan lifts the lid on sexism in publishing and the arts". The Independent.
  9. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (April 29, 2013). "My So-Called 'Post-Feminist' Life in Arts and Letters". The Nation.
  10. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (September 25, 2009). "The Night After the Serial Rapist Was Caught". Slate.
  11. ↑ Rosenblum, Constance (January 28, 2010). "Tea and Uncertainty for a Busy Family". The New York Times.
  12. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (December 12, 2014). "What's in a Name, and How Do I Change Mine in the Digital Age?". Cafe.com. Some Spider LLC. Retrieved Jan 15, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Elle's Lettres: November". Elle. October 4, 2008.
  14. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (March 5, 2007). "Stage Motherhood". The New Yorker.
  15. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (April 15, 2007). "Modern Love; La Vie en Rose, the Takeout Version". The New York Times.
  16. ↑ Lipman, Jennifer (April 18, 2013). "Last woman standing as four fail to make shortlist".
  17. ↑ Stoeffel, Kat (April 11, 2013). "Why Women's Books Have Terrible Titles". The Cut.
  18. ↑ Dean, Michelle (April 17, 2013). "How to Win at the Women's Memoir Game". The Cut.
  19. ↑ "Dani Klein Modisett, Writer, Producer, Actor, Teacher". Daniklein.blogspot.com. February 26, 2004. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  20. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (October 3, 2014). "How I Got Rejected From a Job at The Container Store". Cafe.com. Some Spider LLC. Retrieved October 31, 2014.
  21. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (February 18, 2015). "A Dear John Letter to My Uterus". Themid.com. Retrieved February 7, 2016.
  22. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (November 29, 2017). "How One Woman Found Healing in the Himalayas". oprah.com.
  23. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (March 9, 2018). "How to Lose Your Job From Sexual Harassment in 33 Easy Steps". The Atlantic.
  24. ↑ Copaken, Deborah (July 31, 2018). "Three Children, Two Abortions". The Atlantic.
  25. ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/copaken-kavanaugh/571042/
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