Creative Writing Reading Series: Michael Copperman

About this event

Join the Creative Writing program for a fiction reading by Michael Copperman.

Copperman’s 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. His memoir Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Oregon Book Award in CNF. His new book, Seeking Kenny, is about the extremes of the American subculture of wrestling as seen through the story of five-time national champion Oregon wrestler Kenny Cox’s pilgrimage deep into the wilderness of Kauai’s Na Pali Coast (University of Iowa Press 2026).

Cox devoted his life to wrestling: winning ten Oregon championships in collegiate, freestyle, and Greco-Roman and five junior national championships. But when his college career came to a close, Cox realized he wasn’t sure who he was or how to go about living his life. A few years later, he walked from Oregon to Mexico and back, and upon his return, sold his house and flew to Kauai, where he ventured deep into the wilderness and survived seventy days without supplies. Just weeks after reemerging from the wild, he died at the age of thirty-one.

Copperman considers the life and untimely death of Cox, reconstructing memories of his former training partner with the help of Cox’s family, friends, fans, and fellow wrestlers. Seeking Kenny is, in part, an ode to a storied athlete. But it’s also a cautionary tale about the mental and bodily extremes Cox demanded for his achievements. Copperman asks what it means to live past one’s “glory days,” and what roles loss, grief, faith, and memory play when athletes leave pieces of themselves behind.

Free and open to the public.

For more information about the Creative Writing Reading Series, please visit https://humanities.uoregon.edu/creative-writing/reading-series