Rachel Cohen

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Rachel Cohen
Born1973or1974(age 51–52)
Occupations
  • Essayist
  • biographer
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship (2014)
Academic background
Alma mater Harvard University

Rachel Cohen (born 1973/1974) is an American essayist and biographer. A 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, she is author of A Chance Meeting (2004), Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade (2013), and Austen Years (2020). She has worked in the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Chicago.

Contents

Biography

Rachel Cohen was born in 1973 or 1974 and raised in an "academic family" in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she attended high school. [1] She received the James N. Britton volume An Anthology of Verse for Children as a young child. [2] She obtained her BA from Harvard University in 1994. [3] In 1993, she originally worked as an AIDS activist while in Paris. [2]

Cohen was a MacDowell Colony Fellow twice, in 2000 and 2002. [4] She won the 2003 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for her essay series A Chance Meeting . [5] [6] In 2013, she published Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade , a biography of the eponymous art historian. [7] In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in General Nonfiction. [8] In 2020, she published Austen Years , a memoir-like biography on Jane Austen. [9] She also "wrote a whole book of essays about Pessoa, Mandelstam and Cavafy that was never published". [2] She is also a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. [8]

At some point before 2004, [1] Cohen joined the Sarah Lawrence College faculty, specializing in creative writing. [8] In 2016, she began teaching at the University of Chicago, working as a professor of practice. [3] Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she began using Zoom as a platform for classes with 92nd Street Y. [2]

Cohen has lived in Brooklyn, [1] Cambridge, Massachusetts, [8] and Chicago. [2]

Bibliography

Notes

  1. Reviews of this book: [10] [6] [11] [12] [13] [1]
  2. Reviews of this book: [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
  3. Reviews of this book: [20] [21] [22] [23]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Warren, Marcus (April 19, 2004). "A writer's life: Rachel Cohen". The Telegraph. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Stopping by with Rachel Cohen". Poetry Society of America. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  3. 1 2 "Rachel Cohen". english.uchicago.edu. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  4. "Rachel Cohen - Artist". MacDowell. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  5. "PEN/Jerard Fund Award Winners". PEN America. May 5, 2016. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  6. 1 2 Belth, Alex (May 10, 2024). "'A Chance Meeting' Review: A History of Chat, in Rooms". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  7. "Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade". The Morgan Shop. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Rachel Cohen". Guggenheim Fellowships. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  9. "Austen Years". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  10. Abbott, Ruth (2007). "Who Do You Think You Are?". The Cambridge Quarterly. 36 (4): 342–352. ISSN   0008-199X. JSTOR   42967049.
  11. "Review of A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967". Poetry. 183 (6): 354–354. 2004. ISSN   0032-2032. JSTOR   20606519.
  12. Sjoholm, Barbara (2004). "Solitaries and Friends". The Women's Review of Books. 22 (1): 12–12. doi:10.2307/4024460. ISSN   0738-1433. JSTOR   4024460.
  13. Walpole, Peter (2004). "Review of A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854?1967". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 80 (4): 283–284. ISSN   0042-675X. JSTOR   26439773.
  14. Lieberman, Ralph (May 17, 2017). "Review of "Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade" by Rachel Cohen". caa.reviews. doi:10.3202/caa.reviews.2017.68. ISSN   1543-950X.
  15. "Book Review: Art Historian Bernard Berenson - Reinvention as the American Dream - The Arts Fuse". The Arts Fuse. January 19, 2014. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  16. Waxman, Maron L. (2013). "Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  17. Eakin, Hugh (November 1, 2013). "Book Review: 'Bernard Berenson' by Rachel Cohen". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  18. Endelman, Todd M. (2014). "Rachel Cohen. Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade. Jewish Lives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. 344 pp". AJS Review. 38 (2): 487–489. doi:10.1017/S036400941400052X. ISSN   0364-0094.
  19. Simon, Robert B. (2014). "Review of Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade". The Burlington Magazine. 156 (1336): 472–473. ISSN   0007-6287. JSTOR   24241836.
  20. "AUSTEN YEARS". Kirkus Reviews. January 1, 2020. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  21. "The Consolations of Jane Austen (Published 2020)". July 21, 2020. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  22. Cohen, Adam (July 23, 2020). "REVIEW: Jane Austen's Novels, Read Through a Prism of Motherhood and Mourning". The National Book Review. Retrieved September 17, 2025.
  23. "Review | A writer spent years reading only the work of Jane Austen. She learned a lot about herself". The Washington Post. July 29, 2020. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved September 16, 2025.