Author Spotlight: Eyal Cohen
Eyal Cohen, author of Take the L: How Men Understand, Withhold, and Express Their Love, grew up in Israel before being recruited to play Division I soccer at Stetson University in Florida. He later worked as a middle school teacher before earning his MFA in Writing from Columbia University. His debut book explores how men think, and often avoid thinking, about love. A lover of sports, bell hooks, and Guinness, Cohen brings sharp insight and warmth to the page.
In this interview, Eyal Cohen reflects on his path as a writer from growing up in Israel and playing Division I soccer, to teaching middle school, to earning an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. He shares how personal essays became a way to excavate buried parts of himself, how a classroom comment about masculinity sparked the core theme of his debut book, and how love, identity, and vulnerability thread through his work. Cohen discusses his longhand writing ritual, the role of books in shaping thoughtful discourse, and the cultural narratives his work hopes to shift — especially around masculinity, expression, and emotional risk.
Sentient: Tell us about your path as a writer. What inspired you to start writing, and what catalyzed the writing process for this book?
Cohen: I started writing as an escape from the environment I was accustomed to, which I don't say in a negative way, but simply in that I wanted change. I began writing personal essays, as that content felt most accessible to me, and I slowly realized how the act of writing—thinking about ideas, formulating them, rending them palatable to others—excavated parts of me that seemed to have been under covers for a long time. During one of my writing workshops, a fellow writer said that my narrator came across as overly masculine, which sort of sparked a lightbulb in my brain, at which point I realized I'd been grappling with this question of masculinity and identity in all my writing. From that point on I started writing more intentionally about how masculinity manifested for me, until one day I started an essay about love, specifically; an essay which ended up being this book.
Sentient: Was there a particular moment or experience that sparked the idea for your book? If so, can you tell us about it?
Cohen: A brief elaboration on above answer: I had three separate essays that I had nothing more than a couple of pages for each. One was about a romantic relationship I had, one was about an experience (rooted in friendship) I had, and one was about literature and sex and the performative nature associated with them. I knew all three fit together somehow, and I'd written several braided essays prior to that, so I tried putting them all in one Doc, establishing some interweaving structure, and everything went from there.
Sentient: What ultimate message do you hope to convey to readers?
Cohen: There is fear and risk that is involved in expression—of love, of confusion, of fear itself. We can all do a better job at creating more space for one another to explore those feelings, even with all the mistakes that may come along the journey. We all need to be willing to look inwards and face our own flaws, investigate where they come from, and how they impact the world around us. Mostly, we need to better understand ourselves, and, again, be willing and keen to better understand others, particularly if they'd been historically painted as our social oppositions.
Sentient: Do you have a writing routine? What does it look like?
Cohen: I wake up, don't check my phone or anything, pack my bag, and go to a coffee shop. I read for an hour or so (can be anything, novels or essays or memoirs) as the coffee settles in, then open my notebook. I usually have to sit quietly and think for quite a while about what comes next (I'm writing my next two books in this notebook, so everything is in it), and when I finally gather some thoughts and have an idea, I begin writing longhand. Something about the quiet of the morning, the uninterrupted mind (no idea what's going on with emails or texts or anything), and the mandatory slower pace of the pen, enables a clarity where I can feel creative and focused. Once every week or so (or less frequently, honestly, as I've been lazy) I transcribe from the notebook into my computer Doc for each book, which I've found to be a pretty great first editing step whereby I tweak small things in that transition.
Sentient: What role do you think books and authors play in contributing to meaningful and positive social change?
Cohen: Particularly these days, authors are invaluable because books are products (we hope) of well-rounded, thought-out ideas; ones that have taken into account a multitude of views and that have gone through repeated questionings. When it comes to advocating for social causes, it is imperative that we do not let clickbait and tweet-length ideas dictate the discourse, which is why the value of thoughtful, introspective, inquisitive writing has never been higher.
Sentient: If your book could help shift one perspective in our culture, what would it be?
Cohen: That men suck and that all hope for healthy, progressive, mutual love is lost. I would like people to feel hopeful about men and theor relationships with them.
Sentient: What advice would you give to someone who wants to write their first book?
Cohen: Write. It really is as straightforward as that. A quote I return to often comes from David Sedaris: "It won't happen unless you're sitting at your desk." It really, really won't. You can talk about it all you want (and you should), and you should think about it constantly (I'd argue you should view the whole world through the prism of the book you're working on), but it will never ever happen unless you sit down at your desk and write.