"[P]laywright Gemma Cooper-Novack's articulate exploration of the issues doesn't seek convenient targets for blame … [it] strive[s] to remind audiences that conflict in faraway lands is not without its repercussions right here at home.”

Mary Shen Barnidge, Chicago Reader

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Writer and Playwright

My first poem was published when I was 16 and my first play produced at 17, my poem giving the title to Hanging Loose Press’s anthology of outstanding high school writing Shooting the Rat. Since then, my poetry has been published in numerous magazines and my theatrical work performed in Chicago and New York; my reviews of literature, originally published on Feminist Review and Elevate Difference, are widely cited.

“Yesterday and Australia” and “Aubade,” Hanging Loose 99 (2011)
Arts Reviews, Elevate Difference (2009–2010)
“Asbestosis,” The Saint Ann’s Review (2009)
“Proving It,” The Callback Radio Show (2008)
Arts Reviews, Feminist Review (2007–2009)
“The Ventriloquist Poems,” The Saint Ann’s Review (2005)
“Not Going to Khayelitsha,” The Saint Ann’s Review (2003)
“As the Child Prodigy Grows Up,” “Porn,” and “Shooting the Rat,” Shooting the Rat, Hanging Loose Press (2003)
“Spring” and “I wore these pants,” Aubade (2003)
“The Story of a Play,” Imagine … (2003)
“Sometimes She Dissolves,” Euphony (2002)
“Porn” and “Shooting the Rat,” Hanging Loose 78 (2000)
“Beside It,” ByLine (1999)

Sense and Sensibility: A New Musical (with Joshua Tyra), excerpts produced by JASNA-NY at Manhattanville College’s “Inspired by Austen” conference (2010)
Blindside, directed by Laura Blegen, workshopped at Stage Left Theatre, Chicago, IL (2006) and produced by Stockyards Theatre Project and Helen Balasny, Chicago, IL (2008)
Chicago Chronicle #1 (co-playwright), a documentary theatre project at American Theatre Company, Chicago, IL (2008)
The Book of Esther (children’s play), produced at Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago, IL (2006–2008)
I’m Coming In Soon, Young Playwrights, Inc. at the Cherry Lane Alternative, New York, NY (2000)

Playwriting:
Nancy Fales Garrett
Claudia Allen
PJ Paparelli

Poetry:
Martin Skoble
Srikanth Reddy

Fiction
Beth Bosworth
Richard Stern
Jane Avrich
Leah Stewart

The thought-provoking script clearly illustrates how the level of violence in war affects all of us long after the actual events. Blindside explores the lives of each family member, their relationship to each other, and shows how intricately woven their individual experiences are.

Joette Waters

Chi-Town Daily News

Gemma Cooper-Novack … wrote the astonishingly accomplished, low-key one-act drama [I’m Coming In Soon] that … is head and shoulders the best, most mature—also most moving—of the four works by young playwrights.

Jerry Tallmer

The Villager

It's the same in every war: soldiers disoriented by alien cultures commit deeds unthinkable in their own, and afterward face well-meaning families unable to comprehend their experience. This time, however, the returning veteran is a woman--a wife, sister, and mother-to-be whose homecoming is shattered when evidence comes to light of her participation in atrocities overseas. But playwright Gemma Cooper-Novack's articulate exploration of the issues doesn't seek convenient targets for blame, nor does the Stockyards Theatre Project stoop to sensationalism in its presentation. Instead, both strive to remind audiences that conflict in faraway lands is not without its repercussions right here at home.

Mary Shen Barnidge

Chicago Reader

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