Coake’s ‘We’re in Trouble’ makes Top 20 List in France
Christopher Coake
Lire, a leading French literary magazine, has named the French translation of We’re in Trouble (Harcourt) by Christopher Coake, assistant English professor, as one of the 20 best books of 2006. The debut collection of short stories is a dark examination of how characters experience love and—for some—impending death.
“The characters each confront the news differently. Some take it well; some don’t,” Coake said. “I wanted to let characters of all stripes become good, bad or ugly.”
Coake also won the 2006 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers for We’re in Trouble. Awarded by PEN American, the fellowship “honors an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work—a novel or collection of short stories published in 2005—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.”
We’re in Trouble has been published in the United States, Britain, Italy, France, and Germany, where it’s in a third printing.
“Europe’s historical experience with war and death may explain the book’s popularity there,” Coake said. “Fiction that explores dark themes encounters less resistance than in America.”
Coake wrote the stories that comprise We’re in Trouble beginning a couple of years before he entered the master of fine arts program at Ohio State University. He finished the collection as a graduate student. He now teaches creative writing courses and enjoys helping students to develop their own writing styles.
“The students in my class are doing well—a couple applied to master of fine arts programs, and one captured first place for the thriller/suspense category in Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Contest.
“Writing critiques for students has helped me with my own work,” Coake said about his first historical novel, which he admits is taking time to get his arms around. “This is my first historical effort so I’ve had to apply skills in research, and I’m in a different place in life now, so it took awhile to get back where I needed to be to explore darker themes,” Coake said.
Zanny Marsh, public relations director, can be reached at zmarsh@unr.edu.
