The Co-op Conspiracy - Paperback

by John Curl (Author)

A novel of young women and men, struggling to find love and fulfilling work, who find their lives disrupted when their network of cooperatives, formed in a Southwestern city with the collapse of the economy, is drawn into the movement to protect a mountain sacred to the Navajos from a military takeover.

Author Biography

John Curl is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, (including Revolutionary Alchemy), three histories, (including For All The People), a memoir (Memories of Drop City), translations of classical poetry from Native American languages (Ancient American Poets), a drama, and numerous other works. Born in New York City in 1940, John Curl's family was a mixture of Irish Catholic, English Protestant, and Romanian and Austrian Jew. One grandfather was a Republican, the other a Communist, and his parents New Deal Democrats. During the winters he grew up in Manhattan, and during the summers in New Jersey farm country without electricity or running water. His father was a post office worker, and his mother had been a show girl before she became mom, working for a while with Abbot and Costello. He has a degree in Comparative Literature from New York City College. He currently resides in Berkeley, California with his wife, and has one daughter. He is a professional woodworker by trade, and a founding member of Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop (1974). He is a board member of the Network of Bay Area Cooperatives (NoBAWC). He served as chair of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) and as a Berkeley planning commissioner. He was a founding member of Indigenous Peoples Day in 1991, and has worked on the Berkeley powwow for over 20 years. He is vice-president of PEN Oakland, "The blue collar PEN," and a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. His play The Trial of Christopher Columbus was produced by the Writers Theater in 2009. His transliterations from Quechua formed the libretto for Tania León's Ancient (2009). He represented the USA at the World Poetry Festival in 2010 in Caracas, Venezuela. This is his first published novel.