Our Teachers
The Muse's instructors are all working writers and published authors who have taught courses at colleges, universities, and other community organizations. Read our teachers’ biographies and see what classes they are currently teaching.
Desiree Cooper
A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and community activist. She is an evocative speaker on the themes of racial and gender equality, reproductive freedom, family-positive public policy and the welfare of women and girls. Her award-winning collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, was published by Wayne State University Press in March 2016. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Hypertext Review, The Rumpus, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other online and print publications. Her medal-winning, short film, "The Choice," has been a selection of film festivals in Berlin, California, Virginia and Michigan. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She has received residencies from Kimbilio and the Ragdale Foundation.
Previous Classes Taught
- 1-Day Creative Writing "Camp" for Adults (Sat. June 3)
- (Summer 2023)
- ASAP Creative Writing Nonfiction
- Bullet Points: Using Lists to Explode your Fiction
- (Fall 2020)
- Creative Writing Camp for Adults
- (Summer 2022)
- Story v. Art: The Making of a Children’s Picture Book
- (Winter/Spring 2023)
- Turbo-Powered Narratives
- (Fall 2020)
- Writing While White: How to be a Voice of Change
- (Fall 2020)
- (Summer 2020)
- Writing While White: How to be a Voice of Change
- (Winter/Spring 2021)
- Writing While White: How to be a Voice of Change
- (Summer 2023)