The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded Mick Cochrane, PhD, professor and chair of English, a $10,000 grant for the Contemporary Writers Series. Cochrane’s grant, effective June 1, 2017 through May 31, 2018, is part of more than $82 million given out to 1,029 local arts projects across the country in the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017.
Developed by Cochrane, The Contemporary Writers Series brings nationally and internationally known writers to campus to share their work and to discuss their art with Canisius students in an informal setting. Past guests to Canisius include Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russo, Tracy Kidder, Tracy K Smith, Paul Muldoon, and Junot Diaz; George Saunders, Edwidge Danticat, Sharon Olds, Ann Patchett, Tracy K. Smith, Alice McDermott and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, among others.
Cochrane’s first novel, Flesh Wounds (Nan Talese/Doubleday), was named a finalist in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Competition. His second novel, Sport (St. Martin’s/Dunne Books), was selected for the annual New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age List. Cochrane’s first novel for young readers, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (Knopf), was named winner of the Judy Lopez Memorial Prize for Excellence in Fiction. His latest novel is Fitz (Knopf). Cochrane’s stories have been published in a number of literary journals, including The Cincinnati Review, Five Points, Kansas Quarterly and Northwest Review.
He has been named Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professor three times. In 2015, Cochrane received Canisius University’s Koessler Distinguished Faculty Award.
Canisius University is one of 28 Jesuit universities in the nation and the premier private university in Western New York.
