Joan Cooper (November 10, 1931 in Berkeley, California – September 20, 2014 in Seattle, Washington), known by her pen name, J. California Cooper, was an American playwright and author. She wrote 17 plays and was named Black Playwright of the Year in 1978 for her play Strangers. . California Cooper lived in Marshall Texas for seven years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where she wrote three books.
Life and career
Cooper took inspiration from Thomas Lanier Williams’s adopted name “Tennessee" and adopted "California" as part of her pen name.
Her work was encouraged by the author and activist Alice Walker, who has said of Cooper:
Cooper was named Black Playwright of the Year in San Francisco in 1978 for her play Strangers.
It was at the encouragement of Walker that Cooper turned from her claim to fame in the theater and started writing short stories. Her first collection A Piece of Mine was published in 1984 by Wild Trees Press, the publishing company founded by Walker. Two other story collections followed, before the release of her first novel, Family, in 1991. Cooper wrote Funny Valentines, which later was turned into a 1999 TV movie starring Alfre Woodard and Loretta Devine.
Awards Cooper won include the American Book Award (for her 1986 short-story collection Homemade Love), a James Baldwin Writing Award and a Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association.
She died in Seattle, Washington, in 2014 at the age of 82.
Bibliography
1984: A Piece of Mine
1986: Homemade Love, 1989 American Book Award winner
1987: Some Soul to Keep
1991: Family
1991: The Matter Is Life
1994: In Search of Satisfaction
1996: Some Love, Some Pain, Some Time: Stories
1998: The Wake of the Wind
2001: The Future Has a Past
2003: Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife (contributor), edited by Carleen Brice 2004: Some People, Some Other Place 2006: Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns: Stories 2009: Life is Short but Wide