K.L. Cook is an American author, born in Texas. He is an Associate Professor of English at Iowa State University, where he teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Environment Program. Since 2004, he has been a member of the graduate faculty of Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. Cook is the author of three books of fiction. His book, 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 Story Prize. His novel, The Girl from Charnelle (2006), won The Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction and was named a Southwest Book of the Year, an Editor’s Choice selection from the Historical Novel Society, and was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Prize, among other honors. Cook’s first book, Last Call 2004), a short story cycle chronicling three decades in the lives of a West Texas family, won the inaugural Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. K.L. Cook’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, including Glimmer Train, One Story, Poets & Writers and Prairie Schooner. His work has also been widely anthologized, among others in Best American Mystery Stories, The Prairie Schooner Book Prize: Tenth Anniversary Reader, and Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri. Cook regularly gives readings, workshops, lectures, and seminars at colleges, universities, and literary organizations around the US and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes, and from 2009-2011 was a judge for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. He lives with his wife, the playwright and director Charissa Menefee, and their children, in Ames, Iowa.
