M.F.A. student Cooper Dart writes about rural landscapes of Western America, focusing on themes of shared connection and environments.
Cooper Dart
By Quinn Keller, CLA Student Writer - January 8, 2025
After growing up in the outdoor paradise of Hailey, Idaho, Cooper Dart spent his undergraduate studies on the East Coast at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, where he graduated with bachelor’s degrees in environmental studies and anthropology. Today, Dart continues to take what he learned at Bowdoin and apply that to his nonfiction writing about rural America as an M.F.A. student in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film (SWLF).
“In the rural west, it’s everything all the time,” said Dart. “It’s how you and the people around you are responding to environments and landscapes, and how landscapes and environments are responding to communities, and the feedback loop that happens.” More specifically, Dart is interested in the mythology and mythos of these landscapes and communities.
What drew Dart to environmental studies and anthropology was the intent to learn more about how communities and societies interact with their environment. It was a creative nonfiction course he took during his junior year that lent the possibility of exploring these communities through storytelling.
Dart credits his nonfiction journey to Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, a writing professor at Bowdoin. “Every writer has that moment where they are made to feel like a writer, and it's really important,” Dart said. “I had this brilliant professor who spent a lot of intentional time with me in reviewing my writing, which made me feel like a ‘writer.’ It made me so excited to keep going.” The same writing professor at Bowdoin connected Dart with SWLF Associate Professor Elena Passarello years later when Dart was considering an M.F.A. program.
Much of Dart’s current writing focused on the rural American West was informed by not only his upbringing in Idaho, but also the various seasonal outdoor-related jobs he’s held, including a search and rescuer in Brunswick, a backcountry guide in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, a ski coach in Portland, Maine, an instructor at an outdoor school in North Carolina, and a few more.
“Everyone is searching for something,” Dart said. “Those experiences were very formative for me and leaked into my writing. I’m trying to connect these concepts and experiences because everything about it is interlinked.”
Dart’s exploration of nonfiction is rooted in the intersectionality of the humanities and environment, an area that OSU excels in probing. His self-described “experimental” writing about individuals, communities, and shared myths helps him organize his own thoughts and perspectives. One of Dart’s literary essays explores Idaho’s nuclear history through modern folklore, including the 1961 nuclear reactor accident near Hailey that is shrouded in myth.
“I write about how individuals and communities search through myths and stories about the place they live for some sort of answer to the modern moment.” said Dart. “It’s this more dispersed, symbolic idea of searching and looking for things. It's good to talk about because rural landscapes are such a contested space in the modern American psyche.”
For Dart’s graduate thesis, he is working on a book-length essay about Korean artist Nam June Paik. Paik is famous for being the first person to create art with television screens in the 1950’s and 1960’s. “I feel like it's a great time to challenge and push myself to write a big, sustained piece,” Dart said. His interest in Paik stems from his own interest in togetherness and connection. “He's this very international artist. It makes me wonder ‘what does it mean to be together?’ and ‘how messy does togetherness inherently have to be?’” Dart plans to connect these questions to rural landscapes in America, exploring themes of how small towns are connected with a shared history.
Dart has one more year until he finishes the M.F.A. program and his thesis. He explained that he’d like to explore teaching if things go smoothly, however, he is currently enjoying his writing not being associated with anything professional yet.
“I came into this M.F.A. program with no tangible professional goals,” elaborated Dart. “I wanted this time to be spent devoted to writing in a collaborative community. I’m greatly enjoying living and writing with intention in this moment.”