Marla Presley Cooper

MARLA PRESLEY COOPER earned a BAAS from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with an emphasis on hospital laboratory medicine. When she was diagnosed in 1980 with multiple sclerosis and retired on disability, she began writing. Subsequently, her essays and articles have appeared in The Dallas Times Herald, The Dallas Morning News, The Odessa American, Good Old Days, Accent on Living, Strides, Beyond Boundaries, and Good Times. Her personal-experience essay won the Ethel Harvey Award for Non-Fiction, and was published in The Chapbook (1992). Her work has also been published in The Old Sorehead Gazette, High Lonesome–An Anthology of Works by West Texas Writers, and West Texas Christmas Stories. Cooper’s fiction has appeared in Texas Short Fiction, A World In Itself and Texas Short Fiction, A World In Itself II. She is the author of From Basic to Bastogne: W.G. Presley’s War Stories as Told to Marla Presley Cooper (2007), and is working on her memoir.