Deborah Copaken Kogan Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Deborah Copaken Kogan is a writer, journalist, and photographer. She writes comedy, humor, fiction, and nonfiction books. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and spent her childhood in Adelphi before moving to Potomac, Maryland.

The author attended Harvard University and has worked as a photographer in France, Zurich, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Romania, the Soviet Union, Israel, and other places worldwide.

She has worked for the ABC, where she wrote the story on the 1994 Amtrak Train accident- the story won an Emmy.

Shutterbabe
Deborah Copaken Kogan’s memoir “Shutterbabe” was published in 1998 and has been listed as one of the best memoir of all time. At the time, she was a war correspondent and documentary filmmaker for Time Magazine and Paris Match. She now works as a social worker doing child protection work for the State of Massachusetts.

The book’s title comes from her job as a photographer during her early adulthood when she lived among writers, artists, liberals, and literati on Manhattan’s Upper West Side before moving to India to be with her husband while working as a producer of television documentaries.

Kogan offers an account of her life leading up to that point, including chronicling the tragic early deaths of both parents.

The death of her parents led to depression for herself and her sister, which was exacerbated by their father’s death. She describes how her sister could recover more quickly than she did with the help of medication.

Kogan then details her move to India with her husband, whom she had met in college, and the initial culture shock they experienced, especially regarding living conditions.

She is honest in describing herself as frequently angry at American journalists who romanticized life in Southeast Asia while she lived there for three years. A sentiment often reflected in the stories she wrote for magazines.

The couple returned to New York City after leaving India on a break so that Kogan could visit family. While reporting on post-apartheid South Africa for Time Magazine, Kogan became pregnant with her son. The book ends with the birth of her child, whom she describes as a “miracle” after they had lost their first daughter to miscarriage.

In summary, Shutterbabe is a book about the adventures of Deborah Copaken Kogan and her husband Tim Kreider trying to parent while pursuing demanding careers as a war photographer (Deborah) and a cartoonist (Tim).

They do this across two continents, three cities, four nannies, five miscarriages, and six moves. Not so much because they are selfish but because life is short and you can’t spend it at home changing diapers. Even if you love the guy who’s running off to capture the horrors of war or hurl himself down mountains on a mountain bike or write brilliantly for The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Shutterbabe is not only a memoir, but it’s also a comedy.
But there are thousands of books out there about couples who give up their dreams to stay home with the kids, so what makes Shutterbabe different?
The book isn’t primarily about motherhood; it’s about marriage and work-life balance between two careers. It’s not written by a woman who’s traded her career for children, but by a woman who chose to have them and then returned to work.

And it’s written in a way that will make you laugh out loud on the subway. SHUTTERBABE made The New York Times Bestseller list, but it was also a TV series starring Tina Fey.

The Red Book
The Red Book is a commemoration chronicle passed to Harvard alumni every 5 years, requesting them for basic info including email, address, spouse, occupation, children, and a short summary of the past half-decade of their lives.

Deborah Kogan uses this framework to visualize the lives of some 1989 graduates and creates a drama that entertains and thrills.
The main story focuses on four women who graduated from Harvard university- Jane, Addison, Clover, and Mia. The secondary cast includes friends, children, lovers, spouses, and other graduates that fill up the spaces to create a portrait of a formerly close-knit clan that has diverged over the past decades.
As the 20-year reunion approaches, some lives are bound to chaos, some are headed for a serious change, and others are on a precipice.
Addison is bound on a non-changing marriage with a selfish man who barely helped raise their kids. Then there’s Clover, who struggles with fertility issues and employment issues. Her banking job went haywire after the 2008 economic collapse, and her husband refuses to ejaculate in a specimen cup.
There’s Mia, a happily married Hollywood director who has two teens and a new baby.

Jane is a widow and also a famous journalist. She’s lived in Paris with her kids and boyfriend until she was betrayed by him when she was in Boston taking care of her terminally ill mother.

Jane is no stranger to grief as she was a Vietnamese orphan adopted by American parents. She is about to discover some shocking revelations about her mother as she reunites with her former classmates.

In the hands of other writers, The Red Book could be a boring story with Candy-coated characters. But in the hands of Kogan, she breathes oxygen into these tales to create a fantastic story about friends, familiar themes of love, loss, and redemption. There are lots of twists and turns that are authentic, just like the story and the cast.
The Red Book’s strength solely lies in the authors writing style and narrative. She uniquely cross-pollinates her characters and their stories, creating new knots of torsion and tension. The authors command us with indiscernible subtlety- in that you never recognize the mental shifts until later when you discover the story’s power pivots on its structure. She stands back with her verbal camera weaving the narrative aperture as the light slants through her prose or dissent to the darkness falling on the pages.

She is a master in creating captivating and page-turning narratives to keep the reader hooked to the last page.