Maggie Cooper is a graduate of Yale College, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Inch, and elsewhere, and her chapbook of short fiction, The Theme Park of Women's Bodies, is published in September 2024 from Bull City Press. She lives with her spouse in the Boston area and also works as a literary agent.
At Electric Lit Cooper tagged seven books that carve "out space for the pleasures, rewards, and even the radical possibilities of creating space for marginalized genders—on the page and in the world beyond our bookshelves." One title on the list:
The Garden by Clare BeamsRead about another book on the list.
Clare Beams’ haunting second novel takes place in 1948 at a grand old house in the Berkshires, where main character Irene, alongside several dozen other women, receives an experimental treatment for repeated miscarriages in the hope of finally carrying a baby to term. Yet as much as Irene wants a child, she’s also not a rule follower, sneaking away to discover a walled garden that appears to have uncanny powers. Inspired by the real history of mid-century fertility treatments and their chilling side effects, Beams weaves a gorgeously written account of what she’s called “pregnancy as a haunted house” and the troubled relationship of women’s reproduction and the medical establishment.
--Marshal Zeringue
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