K. L. Cook is the author of six books. Last Call (2004), a collection of linked stories chronicling three decades in the life of a West Texas family, won the inaugural Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction; a tenth-anniversary edition was published in 2013. The Girl from Charnelle (2006), a novel, won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction and was named a Southwest Book of the Year and an Editor's Choice Selection of the Historical Novel Society, among other honors. Love Songs for the Quarantined (2011), a collection of thematically linked stories, won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction and was a longlist finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Marrying Kind, Cook's third collection of linked stories, and a debut collection of poems, Lost Soliloquies, were published in 2019, followed by The Art of Disobedience: Essays on Form, Ficiton, and Influence in 2020. Cook's stories, poems, and essays have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines, including Glimmer Train, One Story, The Writer's Chronicle, Poets & Writers, The Louisville Review, Prairie Schooner, Threepenny Review, Brevity, and Shenandoah, and in various anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories 2012, Best of the West 2011, When I Was a Loser, and Now Write: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers. He co-directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and is a member of the graduate faculty of the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University. 

Website: www.klcook.net

Publications

• The Art of Disobedience: Essays on Form, Fiction, and Influence , Ice Cube Press (2020)
• Marrying Kind: Stories , Ice Cube Press (2019)
• Lost Soliloquies: Poems , Ice Cube Press (2019)
• Love Songs for the Quarantined: Stories , Willow Springs Editions (2011)
• The Girl from Charnelle: A Novel , William Morrow/Harper Perennial (2006)
• Last Call: Stories (10th Anniversary Edition) , Univ. of Nebraska Press (2013)

Awards

• Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction(2003)
• Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction(2007)
• Spokane Prize for Short Fiction(2010)
• Western Writers of America Assocation Spur Award, Best Short Fiction (2011)

Employment

• Professor of Creative Writing at Iowa State University (August 2013 - )

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Poetry