Bernard Cooper’s most recent book is The Bill From My Father (Simon & Schuster).  Cooper is the recipient of the PEN/USA Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim grant, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in literature.  His work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Essays of 1988, 1995, and 1997, 2002, and 2008.  An excerpt of his forthcoming book, My Avant-Garde Education appears in the current issue of Granta.