BOOK LAUNCH! David Shumway, "The World of Leonard Cohen" (w/Ed Simon)

We are thrilled to collaborate with the Pittsburgh Review of Books to launch The World of Leonard Cohen edited by local writer and professor David Shumway, a collection of critical essays exploring the contours and complexities of iconic singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist Leonard Cohen. Shumway will be joined in converation by prolific writer and editor in chief of Pittsburgh Review of Books, Ed Simon.

'Leonard Cohen holds a singular place within the story of American popular music as a fully successful polymath who lounged seductively and neurotically at the center of the singer-songwriter movement while maintaining his stance as an outsider: a poet first, a Canadian, a Jewish seeker who was at once more natural and more steadfast in that role than most. The World of Leonard Cohen reveals the many facets of this elusive character, reminding readers than he is much more than the purveyor of the contemporary hymn ‘Hallelujah.’ With its broad scope and many divergent voices, this anthology rightly celebrates one of music’s most fascinating public intellectuals.’ Ann Powers, author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell

Leonard Cohen's artistic career is unique. Most poets and novelists do not become rock stars. No other rock star's career peaked in their eighth decade as Leonard Cohen's did. Cohen's popularity is still growing following his death. In The World of Leonard Cohen, a team of international scholars and writers explore the various dimensions of the artist's life, work, persona, and legacy to offer an authoritative and accessible summation of Cohen's extraordinary career. His relation to key themes and topics – Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Zen and the East, the Folk tradition, Rock & Roll, Canadian and world literature, film – are all addressed. The World of Leonard Cohen offers a comprehensive, uniquely informed and wholly fresh account of this iconic songwriter and artist, whose singular voice has permanently altered our cultural landscape.

DAVID R. SHUMWAY is Professor of English, and Literary and Cultural Studies. He is the author of American Narrative Realism: The Novel, Film, Television, and Theater, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2026. He wrote Rock Star: The Making of Musical Icons from Elvis to Springsteen and contributed to The World of Bob Dylan, The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter.

ED SIMON is Public Humanities Lecturer in the English Department at CMU, and a widely published author of over a dozen books, including Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, which was named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker. A monthly columnist for Literary Hub, as well as a contributing editor at The Montreal Review, Simon has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and The New Republic.

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