Nicholas Joe Howard Coles (born 1947 in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

) is a British-

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

scholar in

working-class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

and

composition studies Composition studies (also referred to as composition and rhetoric, rhetoric and composition, writing studies, or simply composition) is the professional field of writing, research, and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college leve ...

, and is Professor Emeritus of English at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

Life

He holds BA and MA degrees from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

(Coles was educated at Balliol College, where he was awarded a first-class undergraduate degree), and he holds MA and

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His 1981 PhD dissertation was titlede ''The Making of a Monster: The Working Class in the Industrial Novels and Social Investigations of 1830–1855.'' He wrote and taught about

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...

pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as ...

, contemporary

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, and teacher-research. His best-known book, '' Working Classics'' (1990), co-edited with

Peter Oresick Peter Oresick ( ; September 8, 1955 – September 3, 2016) was an American poet. Oresick was best known as the editor of '' Working Classics'', a landmark literary anthology of working-class poetry, and as a publisher. He served in senior posi ...

, was the first to highlight a seldom acknowledged working-class presence within contemporary American poetry.Oxford University Press website for Nicholas Coles
In the 1990s he was also field director of the National Writing Project, based at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. Until 2002 he directed the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, working to improve students’ writing and academic performance in K-12 schools.

Family

Coles's father, John Howard Coles, was a solicitor in Leeds, U.K., and co-founded the Leeds law firm Walker Morri

Coles has lived in the United States since 1972 and is currently a citizen. He has lived in Buffalo, N.Y., Boulder, Colo., and primarily in Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1990 he separated from his ex-wife and the mother of his elder son. For 20 years he lived with psychotherapist, author, and painter Jennifer Matesa and their son, Jonathan Cole

in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Works

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coles, Nicholas 1947 births Living people Writers from Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh faculty Working-class literature