Robert Coover

His experimental writing revolutionized the US literary scene of the seventies. He founded the Electronic Literature Organization and was one of the first authors to explore the possibilities of hypertext.

Robert Coover. © Martí Pons, 2008. CCCB

Robert Coover (Charles City, Iowa, USA, in 1932) graduated in Slavic Studies at the University of Indiana (1953) and gained a master’s degree in Humanities from the University of Chicago (1965). He has lectured at the universities of Iowa and Princeton, and is Professor Emeritus of Brown University, Providence, where he taught electronic writing and multimedia narrative, coordinated the Freedom to Write programme and developed Cave Writing, a workshop about hypertext fiction in immersive virtual reality environments. He is co-founder of the Electronic Literature Organization, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, PEN International and other organizations.

His bibliography includes a collection of short stories, Pricksongs and Descants (1969); a collection of plays, A Theological Position (1972), and several novels, such as The Origin of the Brunists (1966), his first work and winner of the William Faulkner Prize; The Public Burning (1977), nominated for the National Book Award; Spanking the Maid (1982), Gerald’s Party (1986), Pinocchio in Venice (1991), John’s Wife (1996), Briar Rose (1997) and Ghost Town (1998). In 1992 he published his famed article about hypertext, “The End of Books”, in the New York Time Review of Books, which promoted electronic literature around the world. His most recent work is The Brunist Day of Wrath (2014).

His innovative prose has been recognised by the American Academy of Arts & Letters (1976), the National Endowment of the Arts (1985), the Dugannon Foundation’s REA (1987) and the DAAD Fellowship (1990).

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