Cohen has published two collections of short stories, Lost Women, Banished Souls (University of Missouri Press) and How We Move the Air (Mayapple Press), which was named a bestseller by the SPD in September of 2010, and a chapbook of poetry. She has completed a third collection, End of Days, which has been a finalist in several national contests, but no home yet. Some of her awards include a Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the 2004 Crazyhorse National Fiction prize, Notable Essay citation from Best American Essays 2011, and four awards from the Illinois Arts Council, including a fellowship. Her writing has appeared in many journals including The Antioch Review, The Literary Review, The Ontario Review, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, and American Fiction. A former Review Editor of Another Chicago Magazine and the former Fiction Editor at Hotel Amerika, she is currently a professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she directs the Creative Writing—Nonfiction BA Program.
There is so much defunct in her life at the moment that it is hard to select just one item--but lately she has found herself thinking about the little door in the kitchen of my parents' first house in Ohio that opened to a shelf and then, to another little door that opened to the outside, so the milkman could deliver the new bottles and collect the empties. The house is still there; she wonders what they do with the doors.