Bernard Cooper has written two memoirs, "Maps to Anywhere" and "Truth Serum," as well as a novel, "Year of Rhymes," and a collection of short stories, "Guess Again." His work has appeared in Story, Ploughshares, Harper's, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, five volumes of "The Best American Essays," and been read on "This American Life" as well as "Selected Shorts." He has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Cooper is a core faculty member in the MFA program at Bennington College and teaches in the Masters of Professional Writing program at USC. He is currently completing a collection of essays entitled "My Avant Garde Education," due to be published in 2015.