Robert Coover was both in Charles City, Iowa. He attended Southern Illinois University, Indiana University and the University of Chicago. He has taught at several universities and currently teaches electronic and experimental writing at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

He has written novels, plays, essays and film scripts as well as short stories.

His short story collections include A Night at the Movies [1987], and Pricksongs and Descants [1969]. Several of his stories have been adapted into plays and films, including "The Babysitter" and "Spanking the Maid."

His awards include William Faulkner Award, best first novel, 1966 (The Origin of the Brunists), fellowships from Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, He was give three "Obie" awards for the American Place Theater production of "The Kid" (1972-73), and a National Book Award Nomination for The Public Burning.

By mixing reality with illusion, Coover creates another, alternative world. "Amazing," "fantastic," and magic" are among the adjectives used to describe his work.

"Experimentalist" is a term often applied to his writing by critics. In an interview in Publisher's Weekly, he commented, "Most of what we call experimental actually has been precisely traditional in the sense that it's gone back to old forms to find its new form - to folk tale, to pre-Cervantian, pre-novelistic narrative possibilities."

In 1987 Rea Award jurors Benjamin DeMott, Stanley Elkin and Shannon Ravenel, cited Coover thus:

"For taking the dross of the ordinary and spinning it into the treasure of myth Robert Coover [is] a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America."

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