Sunday, July 5, 5 PM: Book Release Celebration for Michael Copperman, Author of "Seeking Kenny"

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about the author

Michael Copperman is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures at Michigan State University. His work has appeared in The Oxford-American, Guernica, The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, Boston Review, Salon, Gulf Coast, Triquarterly, Kenyon Review and Copper Nickel, among others, and has won awards and garnered fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, Breadloaf Writers Conference, Oregon Literary Arts, and the Oregon Arts Commission. His memoir Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi 2017), about the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta, was a finalist for the 2018 Oregon Book Award in CNF. 

Copperman was once one of the best wrestlers in the Western United States, and attended Stanford on wrestling scholarship. His book, Seeking Kenny: A Wrestler’s Journey, is about the extremes of the American subculture of wrestling as seen through the story of five-time national champion Kenny Cox’s pilgrimage deep into the wilderness of Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, and is available for pre-order now from University of Iowa Press. His work is represented by David Dunton of Harvey Klinger. 

ADVANCED PRAISE for SEEKING KENNY

“It’s been years since I’ve read a book of narrative nonfiction as honest, compassionate, and wise as Seeking Kenny. A journalistic investigation, a touching biography, a meditation on sport, persistence, faith, the natural world, and the search for meaning—this is a book I’m going to hand to my son. This is a book, I’m going to tell him, that will help you become a man, a better man.”
—Joe Wilkins, author, The Entire Sky

“What, in this generation, does it mean for a person to seek? To strive, to find . . . or simply not to yield? Seeking Kenny asks and begs the question in a narrative that merges biography and autobiography, memoir and testimony, and is presented in precise, poetic prose. The answer is gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, heart-rending . . . and incredibly moving.”
—David Bradley, author, The Chaneysville Incident

“Through the life of his friend and fellow wrestler Kenny Cox, Michael Copperman takes an honest, visceral, and moving look at sports and masculinity in his stunning book Seeking Kenny. This is a beautiful story about the importance of friendship and bonding as well as the ways men often define themselves by their physical abilities. In vivid and moving prose, Copperman tells of one man’s search for a place like Eden. In the process, he guides the reader to meditate on their own life and longings.”
—W. Ralph Eubanks, author, A Place Like Mississippi

“I don’t know whether it’s the intensity of the subject Michael Copperman has chosen (more likely, a subject that has chosen him) or the manner in which Copperman so vividly immerses the reader into the worlds of high school wrestling and Kenny Cox’s compelling and uncommon life, but Seeking Kenny urges you forward, moment by moment, page after page. And while Kenny left this Earth too soon, this book is one to celebrate, for its magisterial language, the many people brought so indelibly to life, and the engrossing but never easy answers to the questions it poses about American families, manhood, sport, identity, and their intersections. Truly one of a kind!”
—Tom Williams, author, Among the Wild Mulattos and Other Tales