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WRONG

Working in a variety of forms and media since he first exploded onto the scene in the early 1970s, Dennis Cooper has been a punk poet, a queercore novelist, a transgressive blogger, an indie filmmaker – each successive incarnation more ingenious and surprising than the last. Using extensive archival research, close readings of texts, and new interviews with Cooper and his contemporaries, Wrong weaves a complex and often thrilling biographical narrative that attests to Cooper’s status as a leading figure of the American post War avant-garde.

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'Unfurls a riveting chronicle of Dennis Cooper’s intertwined life and work'

Wayne Koestenbaum, author, Camp Marmalade

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'Hester’s ferocious sleuthing conveys us to whole new areas of understanding about Cooper'

Kaplan Harris, coeditor, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley

 

'Oozing with deep gossip, enriched by rare archival materials and intimate personal interviews, Wrong is a model for future scholarship'

Daniel Kane, author, Do You Have A Band? 

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Read The Irish Times feature about Wrong

University of Iowa Press, June 2020

REVIEWS

AN IMPORTANT BOOK, BOTH HUMOROUS AND RIGOROUS, AND HANDLES THE INTERPLAY OF COOPER’S WORK AND LIFE WITH SENSITIVITY AND GENUINE INSIGHT

The Irish Times

BRIGHT WITH COOPER'S PERSONALITY, AND WITH HESTER'S... REFRESHINGLY, EMINENTLY READABLE

The Times Literary Supplement

RIP-ROARING AND ADVENTURESOME

Caren Beilin, Full Stop Magazine

WEAVES TOGETHER ENGROSSING BIOGRAPHY WITH LITERARY AND CULTURAL CONTEXT 

The Face Magazine

A MARVELLOUS OVERVIEW OF COOPER'S CAREER 

Los Angeles Review of Books

Image courtesy of John Waters, from his home in Baltimore MD

©2026 by Diarmuid Hester

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