At NPR Books, Eleanor Henderson talks about the influence of Middlebury professor Robert Cohen:

As an undergrad at Middlebury, I was one of the many students who hung on Cohen’s every word in class, but I suspect I was the only one to hunt down every word he’d written — ordering back issues of Story, Glimmer Train and New England Review, smuggling them hungrily into my dorm room like the desserts I’d sneak from the dining hall.

I read his stories again and again, then swallowed them whole when, to my delight, they were released in book form, and later I taught them to my own students.

Henderson’s novel Ten Thousand Saints was named a Notable Book and one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 by The New York Times. Cohen’s story, “The Next Big Thing,” originally appeared in NER (19.2).