A short life of the author
Diane Cook (b. 1976) is an American novelist and short story writer whose fiction occupies a distinctive position between literary realism and ecological fable. Her work strips away the comforts of civilization to expose the primal dynamics beneath — territorial aggression, parental ferocity, the fragility of social order — and her prose style is precise, unsentimental, and darkly funny. Her novel The New Wilderness (2020), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, established her as one of the most important American writers engaging with climate catastrophe.
Life and Career
Cook was born in California and studied at the University of Southern California and Columbia University. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a producer for This American Life, the influential public radio programme — an experience that taught her the craft of narrative structure and the power of intimate, voice-driven storytelling. Her fiction retains something of the programme’s commitment to finding extraordinary stories in ordinary settings, though Cook’s settings are rarely ordinary for long.
Her short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Tin House, Granta, and other publications. She won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and was a finalist for the National Book Award 5 Under 35.
Man V. Nature (2014)
The debut story collection — its title a deliberate invocation of the primal conflict formula — contains stories that function as parables about the violence, competition, and territorial instinct that underlie civilized behaviour. In “The Way the End of Days Should Be,” a man discovers that his neighbour has built an elaborate bunker and becomes consumed by competitive apocalypse-preparation. In “Girl on Girl,” women in an office compete with increasing ferocity for a promotion. In “Somebody’s Baby,” a couple struggles to return a baby that has been left on their doorstep while the social systems that should handle the situation fail catastrophically.
The stories work because Cook’s premises — absurd, fable-like, often involving wilderness or survival — are developed with the psychological precision of literary realism. Her characters are recognizable even when their circumstances are extreme, and the violence in her fiction is never gratuitous: it reveals something about the way social structures work and what happens when those structures collapse.
The New Wilderness (2020)
The novel is set in a near-future America where climate change and environmental degradation have made the cities toxic and overcrowded, and the last remaining wilderness has been designated as a protected Wilderness State. Bea, a young mother, applies for her family to join a roving community of volunteers who are allowed to live in the Wilderness State as part of a government study — but the rules are strict: they must leave no trace, follow the rangers’ orders, and move constantly.
The novel’s central relationship is between Bea and her daughter Agnes. In the city, Agnes was sick — the pollution was killing her. In the Wilderness, she thrives physically but begins to grow wild, to bond with the land and the community in ways that distance her from her mother. The novel tracks the gradual inversion of their relationship: as Agnes becomes more competent and more independent, Bea becomes more desperate, more controlling, and more aware that she is losing her daughter to the very wilderness she chose.
The New Wilderness was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize — an unusual selection for a debut novelist — and was widely praised for its refusal to treat climate fiction as mere allegory. The Wilderness State is not a metaphor for nature; it is a political zone, managed and surveilled, where the fantasy of “returning to nature” is revealed as another form of institutional control.
Themes and Critical Standing
Cook’s fiction is concerned with the boundary between civilization and nature — a boundary that her work consistently reveals to be thinner and more permeable than we assume. Her characters are modern, educated, reasonable people who, under pressure, discover that their civilized selves are built on a foundation of animal instinct, competition, and violence.
She has been compared to Karen Russell (for her fantastical premises grounded in emotional realism), to Margaret Atwood (for her ecological speculative fiction), and to Joy Williams (for her spare, unsentimental treatment of nature and human foolishness). Cook’s particular contribution is tonal: she writes about collapse and survival with a deadpan precision that is simultaneously funny and terrifying.
Key Works
- Man V. Nature (2014)
- The New Wilderness (2020) — Booker Prize shortlist
Collecting Cook
Man V. Nature (2014, Harper) first editions bring $15–$30 — scarce as a pre-fame debut collection. The New Wilderness (2020, Harper US / Oneworld UK) first editions bring $20–$40, with the Booker shortlist sustaining interest. The UK Oneworld edition — the publisher that nominated the novel for the Booker — is particularly collected. Signed copies are available through bookshop events and literary festivals.