Stephen Cooper is the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. He has worked as a longshoreman on the docks of Los Angeles Harbor, a mule packer in the Eastern Sierra, a guard in Stockholm's subway system, and at sundry other jobs. Long a Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, he has written and published on both literature and film. He also cowrote and produced the Netflix Original Documentary Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski. River of Angels is his first story collection.