Sara Cooper, PhD

Dr. Sara E. Cooper (Ph.D. University of Texas, 1999) is Professor of Spanish and Director of Multicultural & Gender Studies at California State University, Chico.  She teaches contemporary Latin American and Latinex cultural production as well as LGBTQ Studies.

Cooper is the editor of The Ties That Bind: Questioning Family Dynamics and Family Discourse in Hispanic Literature and Film as well as Lesbian Images in International Popular Culture (also a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies). Her articles and translations appear in several journals and anthologies, including: Letras femeninas, Chasqui, Confluencia, Cuban Studies, Kunapipi, A Changing Cuba in a Changing World, Cultura y letras cubanas en el siglo XXI, Tortilleras: Hispanic and Latina Lesbian Expression, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies and Challenging Lesbian Norms. She is the founder of the Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Cultural Expression Discussion Group of the Modern Language Association.

In 2010 Dr. Cooper launched a new press, Cubanabooks, to publish Cuban women writers in translation.  The press, which to date has published ten books, has been the subject of several radio interviews and newspaper articles in Cuba and the United States, accessible at the Cubanabooks website(opens in new window). Cooper is the translator of Burnt Honey–a novel by Chicano Antonio Arreguín Bermúdez and co-translator of Havana is a Really Big City by Cuban Mirta Yáñez. Dr. Cooper most recently finished the English translation of Sangra por la herida (The Bleeding Wound), by Mirta Yáñez, with support from a translation grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. She is currently collaborating on translations and editing forthcoming bilingual volumes of Cuban literature by women.