etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

THE U.S. EMBASSY LITERATURE SERIES:
Joshua Cohen reads from his collection Four New Messages (Vier neue Nachrichten / Schöffling 2014)

In “Emission,” a hapless drug dealer in Princeton is humiliated when a cruel co-ed exposes him exposing himself on a blog gone viral. “McDonald’s” tells of a frustrated pharmaceutical copywriter whose imaginative flights fail to bring solace because of a certain word he cannot put down on paper. In “The College Borough” a father visiting NYU with his daughter remembers a former writing teacher, a New Yorker exiled to the Midwest who refuses to read his students’ stories, asking them instead to build a replica of the Flatiron Building. “Sent” begins mythically in the woods of Russia, but in a few virtuosic pages plunges into the present, where an aspiring journalist finds himself in a village that shelters all the women who’ve starred in all the internet porn he’s ever enjoyed.

Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He is the author of five previous books, including Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, A Heaven of Others, and Witz. His nonfiction has appeared in Bookforum, Harper’s, and other publications. He received the 2013 Matanel Prize in Jewish Literature and the Pushcart Prize 2012 and was listed among the top 20 under 40 writers by The New Yorker.