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Cynthia (Cindy) L. Cooper is a playwright, journalist and author.
Cooper's plays have been performed in the U.S., Canada and Europe (England, Hungary, Finland, Israel, elsewhere). Her plays include 15 full-lengths, 20+ one-acts, and five plays for young people. Play publications (16) include Heinemann, Applause, Smith-Kraus, Holt, Paper Mache Press, Brooklyn Publishers, Gihon River Press, The New Press, and others. Her plays are stylized structurally, generally mixing drama and comedy, and often reflecting directly or indirectly upon topics of social import. Cooper is a graceful and skilled writer wrote one critic. She has won playwriting awards from Nantucket Theater, Pen and Brush, Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, Malibu International Short Play Festival, many others. She was twice a Jerome Fellow and has won grants from Northwest Area Foundation, The Field, and elsewhere. She is ah Affiliated Member of the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, League of Professional Theater Women, and served for five years on the board of the Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts and Media.
Her journalism has appeared in magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies. She writes frequently about social justice and human rights, including many concerns of women. Among the publications in which her writing has appeared are Glamour, Ms., The Nation, Women's eNews, Tom Paine.com, National Law Journal, New York Law Journal, Marie Claire, California Bar, Equal Justice, Vote.com, ABA Journal, On The Issues Magazine, Ford Foundation Magazine, In These Times, CorpWatch, Perspectives on Women in the Law, Mother Earth News, Poz, MAMM (on women and cancer) and many others. She has also worked on television, doing investigative and consumer journalism, and independent video productions, and has written for several nonprofit organizations, including Amnesty International USA, the Open Society and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. She began her career in journalism at a weekly urban paper in Cleveland, Ohio, her hometown. She has won awards for herself or her publishers including a First Page Award, Maggie Award, APEX, Anne E. Fisher Champion of Choice Award, Vision Award, and others. She is a member of the New York Newswomen's Association.
Her nonfiction books range from a crime investigation to consumer issues, an investigation of reasons for impeachment of the president and co-authorship of a political memoir. Her book, Mockery of Justice, a serious investigation of malfeasance in the judicial system in one case was called one of the few books to actually do something by a Washington Post writer. Other books studied homeowner issues, consumer information, law schools, politics and the life of the Watergate judge. She is a member of the Authors' Guild and served on the faculty at Columbia University's Communications Strategies Program in the division of Professional Studies at Columbia University.
Cooper is a graduate in Urban Studies, cum laude, from Cleveland State University and has a juris doctor with distinction from Emory University School of Law. She serves on nonprofit boards and volunteers with social justice causes.
